France’s Alliance de la Presse D’Information Générale (APIG), a trade group representing French newspaper and magazine publishers, has filed a complaint with the national competition authority seeking compensation from Google for the use of publisher content in AI overviews. The organisation, which counts Le Figaro, Le Monde, Ouest-France, Le Parisien, Les Échos, and L’Équipe among its members, says that Google has violated French law by using their content to fuel its AI Overviews and AI Mode products without prior consent or remuneration.
Under France’s “neighbouring rights” laws, large digital platforms must negotiate with publishers and agree payment terms in exchange for use of their content. Google has already been sanctioned under this law, as it was fined €500 million in 2022 for not complying with its obligations. In the wake of that ruling, Google made commitments to negotiate in good faith in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner.
But APIG says that Google didn’t consult publishers or agree payments prior to using their content to power its AI tools. Benoît Cœuré, the president of France’s competition authority, has previously explicitly stated that “protected content used by AI Overviews must be subject to remuneration under neighbouring rights”.
APIG says that by taking legal action, it’s hoping to bring Google back to the negotiating table.
“Not asking to stop innovation”
Google has generally presented AI Overviews and AI Mode as a simple extension of its primary Search tool. Publishers which allow Google to crawl their websites so that they turn up in search results also have to agree to their content being used by these AI products (though that’s starting to change — the UK’s competition authority recently ruled that the tech giant must let websites opt out of AI overviews without also removing themselves from search). So Google would argue that it’s already paying publishers for use of their IP in AI overviews, via the payment terms it’s already agreed to relating to its search product.
But APIG argues that its members’ content has specific and unique value in AI products, separate to regular search. Importantly, AI products also appear to be having a negative impact on their own businesses: the group cited data from France’s communications regulator which estimated that in European markets where AI summaries are active, they account for between 33 percent and 38 percent of publishers’ traffic losses.
Marc Feuillée, APIG’s president, emphasises that the group isn’t against AI Overviews or AI Mode as a whole. “Publishers are not asking to stop innovation,” he said. Rather, the group wants to ensure they’re fairly paid for their contributions to these products.
Bringing Google back to the negotiating table is one thing, though. Whether APIG, and other publishing groups, are able to secure a deal which makes up for revenue losses attributable to falling traffic is another matter.
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