French Press Group Wants Action Against Google’s AI Summaries

The Alliance of General Information Press (APIG) is a French press group that has made a complaint to the country’s competition authority. They are unhappy with Google’s new AI-generated search result summaries. APIG believes these summaries are taking away readers from newspapers and magazines.

The group is made up of 300 French newspapers. They want the Autorité de la concurrence, which is the regulator, to take action against Google.

Marc Feuillee, the president of the alliance, spoke out about this issue last week. He wants the competition authority to look closely at the AI summaries. He also says publishers should get fair payment for using their content.

APIG is asking for similar actions to what happened in a previous case with Google and French press publishers. Last month, the competition authority told Meta Platforms to come up with a payment plan and start talks with French media. These media had been waiting for a year to be paid for using their content online.

This order was based on a French law from four years ago. That law said Google must pay for using French press articles on its platforms, including its search engine. In that case, Google was fined $576.8 million over a copyright dispute.

Now, APIG is reacting to Google’s recent launch of AI-generated article summaries without any talks. Google introduced this AI in 2024 but only launched it in France last month.

The alliance claims that the summaries have caused a drop in traffic to original news articles. They believe that many users are not clicking through to read the actual sources anymore.

“The unilateral deployment of new uses of press content, without prior authorisation or dedicated remuneration, disregards these commitments,” the alliance said. They added that the communications regulator, Arcom, has estimated that traffic on their sites has fallen by between 33 per cent and 38 per cent due to the AI summaries.

“The fact that AI is built upon media content means one single thing: this information has considerable value,” Mr Feuillee stated.

On the other hand, Google argues that the summaries help people ask more complex questions and discover new content. They also say it helps publishers manage their content, according to France24.

This issue is part of a growing number of lawsuits between publishers and tech companies in Paris. Media platforms around the world are sharing these concerns. Publishers are looking for better compensation and more control over how tech companies use their content.