A US judge has said he's sympathetic to publishers who are losing money because of Google's AI summaries stealing content, but he's not going to do anything to stop it. Google recently escaped having its search and advertising business split over antitrust accusations from the Department of Justice. But it has been facing multiple other antitrust cases and now there's one fewer.
According to Reuters, Google's parent company Alphabet had convinced a US federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit. It had been brought by Penske Media Corp, best known for publishing *Rolling Stone* magazine, and Chegg. They claimed that Google was unlawfully using content from their sites in its AI summaries, causing lost revenue due to reduced traffic.
US District Judge Amit Mehta concluded that he is not "unsympathetic" to the situation. However, he said that addressing economic harm is an issue for legislators, not antitrust suits. "Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free," Mehta wrote. "But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."
Judge Mehta said that consequently, the publishers' suit, "fail[s] to get out of the starting gate." There's no question that Google's AI summaries has cut down the number of users who click through to sites publishing original material. Google admits to that. Separately, Google has had deals involving paying publishers such as News Corp for content, but they do not include AI use.
Source: AppleInsider · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing