Disclosure: Penske Media Corporation is an investor in Vox Media, Technology News’s parent company.
In a groundbreaking legal move, Penske Media Corporation, renowned for its publications Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, has initiated a lawsuit against Google. This case marks Penske Media as the first significant American media entity to challenge Google over its AI-generated content summaries, known as AI Overviews. The corporation argues that these summaries, frequently positioned at the forefront of search results, diminish audience motivation to click on the original sources, resulting in diminished web traffic and an unauthorized advantage derived from journalists’ work.
While Penske Media stands out in this legal pursuit, it is not alone in its grievances against Google. Online educational provider Chegg filed a lawsuit against Google this past February, and a coalition of independent publishers across Europe has raised similar complaints. Furthermore, the News / Media Alliance has publicly condemned the AI feature, labeling it as “the definition of theft” and is urging the Department of Justice to take action.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Google spokesperson José Castañeda defended the AI Overviews, asserting that they enhance user experience by making searches more beneficial. However, Penske Media, along with several other publishers, contests that these AI Overviews remove the necessity of following through with links in search results, contributing to a notable reduction in both traffic and revenue. According to their lawsuit, there has been more than a one-third decline in revenue from affiliate links this year, which they directly associate with diminished traffic originating from Google searches.
Additionally, Penske Media faces a precarious choice: it can either prevent Google from indexing its content, which would effectively erase its presence from search engines and severely impact its business, or it can continue to provide valuable training data for Google’s AI systems, which puts its entire publishing venture at risk. The lawsuit encapsulates this dilemma, suggesting that such a stance is detrimental to PMC’s business sustainability, as noted in the Wall Street Journal.
This lawsuit adds to the ongoing clash between AI technology firms and the creators of the content they utilize. In recent months, notable cases have seen Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster pursue legal action against the AI service Perplexity, while News Corp initiated legal proceedings last year. Major players such as Microsoft and OpenAI are also under scrutiny by various publications, including the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. Furthermore, Google’s defense may become more challenging in light of its acknowledgment of a “rapid decline” in the open web amid escalating antitrust challenges.
