Spanish
Brussels.- The European Commission (EC) announced this Tuesday the opening of a formal investigation into Google for a possible breach of EU regulations by using online content from its platforms to feed artificial intelligence (AI) systems without properly compensating creators or offering them the possibility to opt out.
The investigation will examine whether the US tech giant distorts free competition by imposing "unfair terms and conditions" on online content creators or by granting itself privileged access to it, practices that would disadvantage developers of rival AI models, according to the EC in a statement.
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In particular, the Community Executive suspects that Google may have used the content of companies or individuals who publish content on websites to provide generative AI services ("AI Overviews" and "AI Mode") on its search results pages without offering them adequate compensation or the possibility of refusing such use of their content. AI Overviews displays AI-generated summaries in response to a user's query above the traditional results, while AI Mode is a chatbot-like search tab that answers user queries conversationally. The Commission will investigate the extent to which Google's generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode relies on the content of web publishers without adequate compensation and without the possibility for them to refuse without losing access to Google Search, considering that many online creators depend on that search system to obtain user traffic. Furthermore, the EC considers that Google may have also used videos and other content uploaded to its YouTube platform to train its generative AI models without adequate compensation for creators and without offering them the possibility of rejecting such use, within the "terms and conditions" they must accept to use its services. YouTube's policies also prohibit rival AI model developers from using content from its video platform to train their own artificial intelligence systems.Although the opening of a formal investigation does not prejudge its results, the practices that are the subject of the EC's analysis could infringe EU competition rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant position.
From Google, its spokesperson pointed out that the investigation "could slow down innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever." "Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies," added the spokesperson and added that the company "will work closely with publishers and the creative industry, in their transition to the AI era."
