Google’s AI-powered search engine is seen as a potential death blow to cash-strapped media, with some experts arguing that a new US antitrust crackdown is the industry’s only hope for survival.
Critics warn that Google could gain dangerously strong control over the flow of information and advertising dollars on the internet unless courts or Congress step in to rein in AI summaries, automatically generated summaries that effectively downgrade links to other websites and deprive publishers of valuable traffic.
The impact is expected to be “devastating,” with one study finding that the website Losing up to 64% of your organic trafficThis is despite a series of embarrassing gaffes during AI Overviews’ rollout, including asking users to eat rocks and put glue on pizza.
Google has also been accused of scraping copyrighted news articles without credit or compensation to “train” its AI search engine. On May 28, Daniel Coffey, CEO of the News Media Alliance, wrote a letter to both the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission urging them to “end Google’s anti-competitive conduct before the impact becomes irreversible.”
“If the government steps in and identifies this as unfair competition, if the government steps in and identifies this as an unlawful exercise of power, we can get relief,” wrote Coffey, whose nonprofit group represents more than 2,200 publishers, including The Washington Post.
The Justice Department and the FTC declined to comment.
Jonathan Cantor, Director of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice In an interview with the FT Last week, the agency said it was moving “urgently” to investigate “monopoly bottlenecks and the competitive environment” related to AI, including tech companies’ use of data to train models.
Kanter did not specifically mention Google’s push into generative AI in the interview, but experts said the omission was likely a calculated attempt to avoid criticism from public cheerleaders, given that CEO Sundar Pichai’s Department of Justice is currently pursuing a lawsuit against the company.
During the period A recent AI regulation workshop co-hosted by the Department of JusticeKanter spoke specifically about the threat that technology poses to journalism, the arts and other creative endeavors.
“Without competition, the problems that internet market power has caused in journalism could spread to other important content production markets.” Mr. KanterHe added: “The people who create and produce these inputs must be properly compensated.”
“If a company in the AI ecosystem violates antitrust laws, the antitrust division will have something to say about it,” Kanter added.
The Justice Department is already suing Google for alleged illegal anticompetitive practices in separate lawsuits targeting its online search empire and digital advertising business, which generated $237.86 billion from digital advertising in 2023 alone.
Some legal experts have warned that the Justice Department’s existing cases don’t go far enough to address the news industry’s concerns.
Congressional intervention, or new antitrust litigation focused specifically on AI, would be a more effective way to address the problem, said Christine Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who specializes in antitrust litigation.
“The answer to AI and protecting journalism is for Congress to finally step in and say it needs to deal with AI — not piecemeal through litigation, but holistically,” Bartholomew said.
But other experts believe the Justice Department’s lawsuit could result in some relief for news publishers.
Potential remedies could include forced sales of Google’s Chrome web browser and Android smartphone software, adding friction to the market, said Tim Wu, a prominent antitrust scholar and professor at Columbia Law School. a recent American Economic Freedom Project conference;
But Wu warned that any relief in Google’s antitrust case could quickly become meaningless without addressing the rapid changes to the internet economy brought about by AI, which will have a major impact on both search and digital advertising.
“The most successful interventions in history have been those that look to the future rather than backwards,” Wu said. “I think interventions aimed solely at reinvigorating competition in search are too limited. Interventions that don’t take into account competition in the AI ecosystem have not produced good results.”
David Dinielli, a former special counsel at the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said increased competition in the ad tech sector “will create much greater profits for publishers who sell ads than they did under Google’s control.”
Increased competition in search could similarly encourage rivals to forge new partnerships with trusted news organizations, according to Dinielli.
“Restoring competition in these markets is necessarily future-proof and could bring benefits to news publishers that cannot even be predicted from their current position,” he added.
In the search case, the Department of Justice is accusing Google of paying tens of billions of dollars a year to Apple and other companies to maintain an illegal monopoly over more than 90% of the online search market. A federal judge is due to decide the case later this year.
The Justice Department’s second lawsuit seeks to break up Google’s ad tech business, including the possible forced sale of its ad management platform. Curiously, Google has offered to pay the full damages proposed by the U.S. government, a move critics see as a sign the company is desperate to avoid a risky jury trial.
In May, the bipartisan Senate AI Working Group AI policy “roadmap” announced These included calls for safeguards to address “AI-related concerns of professional content creators and publishers.”
While the Department of Justice led the recent antitrust lawsuit against Google, FTC Chairman Lina Khan has suggested the agency is actively investigating issues raised by news publishers about AI.
meanwhile Wall Street Journal conference last monthReferring to the use of data scraping by big tech companies, Khan noted that the law “prohibits unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”
Khan said in February that big tech companies were undermining the economic model of the news industry.
“Historically, we have seen how important it is for policymakers to play an active role in structuring markets to ensure an independent and free press can survive.” Khan told Axios:.
Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Google has sought to downplay concerns about AI-powered search, with several executives recently declaring that the company will “continue to drive valuable traffic to publishers and creators” through search.
“AI Summary leads people to visit a more diverse range of websites for help with more complex questions. We also find that links included in AI Summary receive more clicks than if the pages had appeared as traditional web listings for that query,” Google said in a recent blog post.
Coffey is not convinced by Google’s arguments, calling the claim that publishers benefit from AI summarization “insulting”.
“If you believe they’re doing something good for our benefit, not for their own financial gain, then look, here’s the bridge I want to sell you,” Coffey said. “Google is doing this because it’s in Google’s interest.”
