At the end of July, Google in France introduced its AI summaries, which are displayed above the usual links in search results and summarize information from various sources.
However, the newspaper association APIG wants the country’s competition regulatory authority to ensure that Google complies with the commitments made in 2022, which were outlined in the agreement reached with French media groups regarding compensation.
The information “has great value,” said APIG president Marc Feuillee, who is also the general director of the newspaper Le Figaro.
“Editors are not trying to stop innovation. They ask that this value be shared and demand compensation for the use of their content,” the federation said in its statement.
It indicated that Google started providing new AI summaries without their consent, which is said to violate the 2022 agreement.
The competition authority had already fined Google 250 million euros in 2024 for non-compliance with some parts of the agreement.
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Over the past two decades, the revenues of many media groups have decreased as advertising increasingly moves online, where technology companies capture a large share of the profits.
Critics argue that AI summaries cause even more harm because they reduce internet traffic to newspaper articles: many users simply no longer click links to read the original source of information.
Google claims that such summaries allow people to ask more complex questions and discover new content, and also states that it provides control tools to help publishers manage their content.
Last December, the European Union announced an investigation into whether Google violated competition rules by using media and other publishers’ online content to train and provide AI services without appropriate compensation.
