The Italian Federation of Newspapers publishers (FIEG) has filed a formal complaint with Agcom, Italy’s communications watchdog, arguing that the search engine’s AI-generated summaries feature is a “traffic killer” that imperils their survival.
While similar grievances have been lodged in other EU countries; the prime motive coordinated by the European Newspaper Publishers Association is to push the European Commission to open an investigation against Google under the EU Digital Services Act.
However, the threat outlined by AI Overviews-which gives users information without them having to click through the original source by encapsulating searches with a block of text at the top of the result page- is among the primary issues of European news outlets.
Meanwhile, FIEG said that it was also quite perturbed about the recent AI Mode, which takes information from numerous sources and presents it as a chatbot.
In this regard, the federation argues that the Google services “violate fundamental provisions of the Digital Services Act, with detrimental effects on Italian users, consumers, and businesses.”
A statement has been released by the FIEG, which states: “ Google is becoming a traffic killer, and the products not only directly compete with content produced by publishing firms, but also “reduces their visibility and discoverability and thus their advertising revenues.”
Some studies have been published recently; for instance, one study in July by the UK-based authorities analytics company claimed AI Overviews, launched by Google last year, caused up to 80% fewer clickthroughs.
The research, which was recently submitted as part of a legal complaint to the UK’s competition watchdog about the influence of Google AI Overviews, also found that links to YouTube- owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet- which were more prominent than the normal search result system.
On the contrary, the second study by the Pew Research Center, also demonstrated a major hit to referral traffic from Google AI Overviews, showing that users only click a link under an AI summary once every 100 times.
Google launched AI Overviews in Italy in March. Later, the country became the first in the EU to approve a framework law regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to restrain child access and incarcerating prison terms on those who use technology to cause harm and generate deepfakes.
The investigation is ongoing, and a final conclusion has not been reached by the regulatory bodies.
This action is part of the broader, coordinated effort by the European Newspapers Publishers’ Association to push for a formal investigation against Google under the EU Digital Services Act.