Publishers are finally going after Google. What happens now?

"Media companies have filed so many lawsuits against AI companies over the past two years that the act has become routine. When I report on these in The Media Copilot newsletter, they're often digest items, adding to the pile of publishers who want fair compensation for the content AI labs have ingested to create large language models (LLMs). There are so many that elaborate infographics are required to keep track of them all."

"Penske Media's copyright lawsuit, however, is anything but typical, and that's because of its choice of target. The Rolling Stone publisher is going after Google. Google is in many ways the big fish in the AI world. It's true that more people use OpenAI's ChatGPT than they do Google Gemini, but Google has the distinction of being both a frontier AI lab and the current owner-operator of the primary way people get information on the internet."

Media companies have filed numerous lawsuits against AI firms for ingesting publisher content to build large language models. Many suits have become routine filings as publishers seek compensation for their work used without consent. Penske Media has sued Google, marking a higher-stakes move because Google operates both advanced AI projects and the dominant search platform. Google’s AI Overviews deliver direct answers that reduce clicks and referral traffic to publishers, eroding advertising and subscription income. Google uses a single crawler to index sites for both traditional search and AI features, compelling publishers to permit content harvesting while referrals decline.

Read at Fast Company