Rolling Stone parent Penske sues Google for ripping off articles in AI summaries | Latest Tech News
The parent company of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood has sued Google, alleging that its controversial “AI Overviews” function is ripping off articles without permission – and crushing site visitors in the method.
Filed in Washington DC federal court, the lawsuit from Penske Media accuses Google of inflicting “millions of dollars of harm” and reaping “illegal profits.” Google mandates that publishers enable their content to be used to prepare its AI abstract function if they need their hyperlinks to be included in search outcomes, according to the criticism.
The outcome, according to Penske, is that Google is robbing publishers of the proceeds they might obtain by licensing the rights to their articles or promoting promoting based on web site visitors that is instead devoured up by the Big Tech giant’s AI instruments.
“Google’s conduct threatens to leave the public with an increasingly unrecognizable Internet experience, in which users never leave Google’s walled garden and receive only synthetic, error-ridden answers in response to their queries—a once robust but now hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust,” the company’s lawsuit says.
Google locations AI summaries atop its search outcomes. Gado via Getty Images
The lawsuit is the latest signal of intense pushback from news publishers and content creators over Google’s “AI Overviews” – which provides AI-generated summaries to the top of search outcomes while demoting conventional “blue links” that ship readers to other web sites.
Aside from hurting the news industry, AI Overviews often spits out blatantly false “hallucinations” — such as its current false declare that the rapper Eminem carried out at the funeral of Jeff Bezos’s mom.
Penske, whose media properties also embrace Variety and Deadline, said about 20% of Google search outcomes have an AI-generate abstract positioned above the hyperlink to their authentic work.
Penske Media consists of The Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone. Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter
The media giant said it has “experienced declines in search impressions and declines in search referral traffic” as Google has expanded use of the function – at the price of important advert income.
“With every article it publishes on its websites, PMC is forced to provide Google with more training and grounding material for its [AI] systems to generate AI Overviews or refine its models, adding fuel to a fire that threatens PMC’s entire publishing business,” said the criticism.
Penske needs a everlasting injunction barring Google from participating in unlawful conduct, as properly as damages.
Google has repeatedly claimed that AI Overviews drives more site visitors for web sites, not less.
“With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. We will defend against these meritless claims.” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a assertion.
Penske Media needs an injunction against Google. AP
While some web publishers have cut licensing offers with Google, others have opted to take legal motion.
The training software program firm Chegg sued Google in February, with its CEO claiming that the tech giant has “unjustly retained traffic that has historically come to Chegg, impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees.”
Google’s chief AI rival OpenAI has reached licensing offers with The Post’s parent News Corp, as properly as Financial Times and The Atlantic.
The industry thought it could be getting a reprieve after US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had an unlawful monopoly over online search, where it controls an estimated 90% of the market.
Google has insisted its software really drives more site visitors to web sites. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Despite the Justice Department’s warnings that Google would leverage its search monopoly to dominate AI without strong court-ordered remedies, Mehta opted for a lighter-touch method that critics slammed as a “slap on the wrist” earlier this month.
Google might be compelled to share search data with rivals but received’t have to promote off its Chrome web browser or discontinue funds to Apple to guarantee its search engine is enabled by default on most smartphones.
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