Brussels’ fight against what it sees as abuses by big tech companies continues. THE European Commission opened a formal competition investigation to assess whether Google broke EU competition rules when using content from web publishers as well as content uploaded to the online video sharing platform YouTubefor artificial intelligence (AI) purposes. The investigation will notably examine whether Google distorts competition by imposing unfair conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to this content, thus putting developers of competing AI models at a disadvantage.
The Commission is concerned that Google may have used the content of web publishers, i.e. media to provide generative services based on artificial intelligence (AI Overviews and AI Mode) on their search results pages without adequately compensating publishers and without providing them with the opportunity to opt out of such use of their content.
AI Previews display responsive AI-generated summaries to user’s search query above organic resultss, while AI mode is a chatbot-style search tab that answers user queries in a conversational style.
The Community Executive will also explore the extent to which Google’s generation of AI previews and AI modes relies on content from web publishers without adequate compensation For this reason and without publishers having the possibility to refuse it without losing access to Google search. In fact, many publishers rely on Google Search for user traffic and don’t want to risk losing access.
Brussels also fears that the tech giant will use videos and other content posted on YouTube training Google’s generative AI models without adequate compensation for creators and without offering them the possibility of refusing said use of their content. Content creators who upload videos to YouTube must allow Google to use their data for various purposes, including training generative AI models. Google does not pay YouTube content creators for their content, nor does it allow them to upload it to YouTube without allowing Google to use that data.
At the same time, YouTube’s policies Rival AI model developers banned from using YouTube content to train your own AI models. If proven, the practices under investigation could breach EU competition rules prohibiting abuse of a dominant position. Of course, Brussels specifies that the opening of a formal investigation does not prejudge its result.
“A free and democratic society depends on media diversity, free access to information and a dynamic creative panorama. These values are fundamental to our identity as Europeans,” responded the Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Competition, Teresa Ribera. “AI brings remarkable innovation and numerous benefits to people and businesses across Europe, but this progress cannot be made to the detriment of the fundamental principles of our societies. “We are therefore investigating whether Google imposed unfair conditions on publishers and content creators, while disadvantaging developers of competing AI models, in violation of EU competition rules,” it concluded.
This comes just days after Brussels’ offensive against And the Commission imposed a fine of 120 million euros to X -formerly Twitter- for breaching the transparency obligations established in the Digital Services Act (DSA). According to the Commission, deceptively its “blue tick” verification systemselling this badge without actually verifying the identity of the accounts, which can mislead users into believing that certain accounts are genuine.
Furthermore, to prevent or complicate researchers’ access to public data of the platform, which limits independent review of advertising campaigns, misinformation or abuse.
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