The European Commission (EC) announced on Tuesday (09/12/2025) the opening of a formal investigation against Google for a possible violation of Community rules by using online content from media outlets and other content creators on its platforms to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems, without adequately compensating the creators or offering them the opportunity to opt out of the use.
The investigation will examine whether the American tech giant is distorting free competition by imposing “unfair terms and conditions” on online content creators or granting itself privileged access, practices that would disadvantage developers of competing AI models, the European Commission said in a statement.
In particular, the Community Executive suspects that Google may have used the content of companies or individuals who publish content on websites to provide generative AI services (“AI Overviews” and “AI Mode”) on its search results pages, without offering them appropriate compensation or the opportunity to opt out of such use of their content.
Investigation into the use of content from web publishers without compensation
AI Overviews displays AI-generated summaries in response to a user query above traditional results, while AI Mode is a chatbot-like search tab that answers user queries conversationally.
The Commission will investigate the extent to which Google relies on content from web publishers to generate AI overviews and AI mode, without adequate compensation and without giving publishers the opportunity to opt out without losing access to Google Search, taking into account that many online creators rely on this search system for user traffic.
Likewise, the EU Commission considers that Google could also have used videos and other content uploaded to its YouTube platform to train its generative AI models without paying the creators adequate compensation and without offering them the opportunity to reject such use under the “Terms and Conditions” that they must accept to use its services.
YouTube’s policies also prohibit rival AI model developers from using content from its video platform to train their own artificial intelligence systems.
Although the initiation of a formal investigation does not prejudge its results, the practices subject to the Commission’s analysis could violate EU competition rules, which prohibit abuse of a dominant position.
CP (efe, afp)
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