{"id":337196,"date":"2025-12-09T13:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T13:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/337196\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T13:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T13:09:11","slug":"eu-investigates-google-over-ai-generated-summaries-in-search-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/337196\/","title":{"rendered":"EU investigates Google over AI-generated summaries in search results"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Liv McMahonTechnology reporter<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765180027_231_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/968a9a60-d4f4-11f0-ad89-6340086573f4.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"Getty Images A person wearing a bright, orange jacket and white t-shirt types on a smartphone held in their hands.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The EU has opened an investigation into Google over its artificial intelligence (AI) summaries which appear above search results.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The European Commission said it would examine whether the firm used data from websites to provide this service &#8211; and if it failed to offer &#8220;appropriate compensation&#8221; to publishers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">It is also investigating how YouTube videos may have been used to improve its broader AI systems, and whether content creators were able to opt-out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A Google spokesperson said the probe &#8220;risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era,&#8221; they said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The EU&#8217;s investigation will also cover Google&#8217;s AI Mode, which gives people an answer in a conversational style with some links to other pages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">It is in addition to the tech giant&#8217;s existing search platform &#8211; providing an experience similar to its rivals such as ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Google&#8217;s introduction of its AI Overview summaries was met with concerns it could <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/clyj4zky4zwo\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">result in fewer visitors to websites<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Without people clicking on web pages, sites generate less money from advertising.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Daily Mail previously claimed the number of people who clicked its links from Google search results fell by around 50% since Google introduced its AI Overview feature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Commission said it was concerned both web publishers and YouTube video creators were not being compensated or given the opportunity to opt-out of their content being used to train the company&#8217;s AI models.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Ed Newton-Rex from AI fairness campaigners Fairly Trained said it was &#8220;career suicide&#8221; for people to not publish their work on YouTube or online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He told the BBC Google &#8220;essentially makes it a condition&#8221; of online publishing that the firm can &#8220;use your work to build AI that competes with you&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;This investigation could not come at a more critical time for creators around the world,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>AI training<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Commission&#8217;s investigation comes down to whether Google has used the work of other people published online to build its own AI tools which it can profit from.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Its generative AI systems are capable of producing text, images and video in seconds, in response to simple text prompts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Many firms can now do this &#8211; and they have used huge volumes of online web content to train their underlying systems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">But creatives have voiced concern their work may have formed the basis for big tech&#8217;s AI products and outputs, at the expense of their own rights or livelihoods.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;A free and democratic society depends on diverse media, open access to information, and a vibrant creative landscape,&#8221; said Commission executive vice-president Teresa Ribera.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">She said AI was ushering in &#8220;remarkable innovation&#8221; and &#8220;many benefits for people and businesses&#8221; &#8211; but its growth should not come at the cost of the EU&#8217;s values.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">But the Commission&#8217;s recent enforcement of its tough digital rules &#8211; which can see tech companies face huge fines if they found to be breaching them &#8211; has been met with outrage from US lawmakers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Elon Musk&#8217;s platform X <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c0589g0dqq7o\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">axed the Commission&#8217;s account for placing adverts<\/a> on the site, after the EU brandished a \u20ac120m (\u00a3105m) fine over its blue verification badges.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765180027_231_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/348b21e0-26a8-11f0-8f57-b7237f6a66e6.png.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A green promotional banner with black squares and rectangles forming pixels, moving in from the right. The text says: \u201cTech Decoded: The world\u2019s biggest tech news in your inbox every Monday.\u201d\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liv McMahonTechnology reporter Getty Images The EU has opened an investigation into Google over its artificial intelligence (AI)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-337196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}