French newspapers target Google over AI summaries

Google contends that the summaries allow people to ask more complex questions and discover new content. A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File) (AFP) — A federation of nearly 300 French newspapers said Tuesday that it filed a complaint with the country’s competition authority over Google’s new AI-generated summaries of search results, fearing the feature will erode traffic to their websites. It is the latest salvo by media companies against the U.S. tech giant’s use of their articles and other content as they grapple with declining advertising revenue. Google launched its AI Overviews in France in late July. The summaries appear above regular search results and compile information from a wide array of sources. But the APIG association of newspapers wants the country’s competition regulator to ensure “Google’s respect of commitments made in 2022” as part of a compensation deal with French media groups. Information “has considerable value,” APIG President Marc Feuillee, who is also managing director of the center-right Le Figaro newspaper, said in a statement. “The editors are not seeking to halt innovation. They are asking for this value to be shared, and for compensation for the use of their content,” the association said in its statement. It said Google had introduced the new artificial intelligence summaries without their consent, an alleged violation of the 2022 deal. The competition authority had already fined Google 250 million euros ($290 million) in 2024 for failing to respect parts of the agreement. Many media groups have seen their revenue dwindle over the past two decades as advertising moved increasingly online, where tech firms take a large share of the profits. Critics say AI summaries cause further harm by leading to a drop in internet traffic to newspaper articles, with many users no longer clicking through to read the original source of the information. Google contends that the summaries allow people to ask more complex questions and discover new content, and says it provides controls to help publishers manage their content. The EU announced in December 2025 that it was investigating whether Google breached competition rules by using content put online by media and other publishers to train and provide AI services without appropriate compensation. Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.