Penske Media sues Google over AI summaries
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Penske Media Corporation (PMC) has sued Google, alleging the tech giant illegally uses its journalism to power AI summaries and reduces traffic to its sites.
Why it matters: The antitrust suit marks the first time Google has been challenged by a major U.S. publisher in court over AI search, setting up a potentially defining clash over compensation in the AI era.
- "As a leading global publisher, we have a duty to protect PMC's best-in-class journalists and award-winning journalism as a source of truth," Jay Penske, chairman, founder and CEO of PMC, said in a statement to Axios.
- "Furthermore, we have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital media and preserve its integrity – all of which is threatened by Google's current actions."
Zoom in: PMC filed the suit Friday in federal district court in the District of Columbia. PMC lists itself and its individual titles as plaintiffs, including The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and Billboard.
- PMC said about 20% of Google search results that link to a PMC site include AI overviews and it expects that percentage to increase. The lawsuit also said PMC's affiliate revenue has declined by more than a third by the end of 2024 compared to its peak, citing search traffic declines.
- "Siphoning and discouraging user traffic to PMC's and other publishers' websites in this manner will have profoundly harmful effects on the overall quality and quantity of the information accessible on the Internet," the lawsuit said.
- "If unchecked, these anticompetitive practices will destroy the business model that supports independent journalism," it continued.
The other side: Google has argued AI overviews send traffic to a wider variety of sites and make the search experience better.
- "With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered," Google spokesperson José Castañeda said. "Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend against these meritless claims."
The big picture: Google's AI overviews pull information from across the web and display answers without requiring a user to click through to the site. Publishers have referred to this threat as "Google Zero."
- PMC's suit follows others against Google over AI overviews, including by online education company Chegg and Arkansas newspaper, the Helena World Chronicle.
- Other media companies have targeted rival AI companies. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. News Corp is among the publishers suing Perplexity. More than a dozen major U.S. news organizations are suing Cohere.
- Some lawsuits have led to AI companies being forced to pay content owners. Anthropic recently agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers in the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history.
