Google’s new AI-driven search feature, AI Mode, has drawn sharp criticism from the News/Media Alliance. On Wednesday, the non-profit trade association based in the U.S. released a statement calling AI Mode “the definition of theft.” This criticism follows the recent announcement by Google, during its annual I/O event, that AI Mode will be accessible to all users in the U.S. The tech giant has also indicated that it will not allow publishers to opt out of this feature.
Concerns Raised by News Publishers to the US DOJ
In her statement, Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, voiced strong concerns about Google’s practices. She noted, “Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft.” Furthermore, Coffey called on the U.S. Department of Justice to address these serious issues to curb the internet’s growing dominance by one company.
The association expressed further worry regarding the AI Mode’s delivery of information to users without displaying URLs, a hallmark of traditional Google Search. This change could significantly reduce both website traffic and revenue for publishers.
The News/Media Alliance represents a number of prominent publishers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Condé Nast, and Vox Media, and has emerged as a prominent critic of generative AI technologies. On its AI Principles page, the organization emphasizes that the developers of generative AI must respect the rights of content creators and maintain transparency with publishers.
A report by Bloomberg has revealed that Google set a strict policy requiring publishers to provide their content for AI training if they wanted to be included in traditional search rankings. Citing internal documents from Google’s antitrust trial, the report stated that the company planned to “silently update” its policies on publisher data without any public announcement.
As of now, Google retains a dominating share of nearly 90 percent in the search market, according to a report from Statista . This makes it difficult for publishers to dissociate from Google without incurring significant losses in traffic and revenue. However, with Google refusing to grant publishers any control over their content while they remain listed, AI Mode is expected to present information with minimal attribution and likely very little redirected traffic.
The News/Media Alliance underscored its concerns on its website, arguing that generative AI tends to highlight and synthesize much more proprietary content than traditional search. If this trend is left unchecked, it could lead to an increase in “zero-click” searches, ultimately diminishing or eliminating the value for publishers.
