French media urges antitrust watchdog to take action over Google AI

The leading French press trade association, the Alliance de la Presse d'Information Générale (APIG), which represents hundreds of daily newspapers and magazines, has formally petitioned France’s competition authority, the Autorité de la concurrence, to take action against Google over its AI Overviews feature.

Publishers argue that Google’s AI-generated summaries, which appear at the top of search results, display key information directly to users, significantly reducing website traffic and depriving publishers of critical readership and advertising revenue. Industry estimates cited by regulators suggest potential traffic losses of between 33% and 38%.

APIG claims Google launched the AI feature in France without prior authorization, fair remuneration, or good-faith negotiations.

The group argues that this violates binding commitments Google made to the competition watchdog in 2022 concerning neighboring rights and fair compensation for news content.

As reported by Reuters, the press association is urging the regulator to take action similar to a recent case involving Meta, in which the social media company was ordered to resume payment talks and put forward a compensation plan for traditional media over the use of their content by AI tools.

Four years ago, France’s competition watchdog ordered Google to pay for using French press articles on its platforms, including its search engine. Google was fined €500 million ($576.8 million) following the copyright dispute.

APIG said, “The unilateral deployment of new uses of press content, without prior authorisation or dedicated remuneration, disregards these commitments.”

The group added that France’s communications regulator, Arcom, has estimated that traffic to publishers’ websites has fallen by between 33% and 38% because of AI-generated summaries.

Marc Feuillée, the alliance’s president, said in a statement: “The fact that AI is built upon media content means one single thing: this information has considerable value and publishers demand this value is shared.”