News publishers say that Artificial Intelligence Mode from the Internet giant is theft
The News/Media Alliance condemns Google’s expansion of Artificial Intelligence and its implications on search engine adversarial decision making
A document that was an early list of options that was considered by the company does not reflect the decisions that were made, according to the company. Publishers have always had control over how their content is made available to search engines, as artificial intelligence has been built into Search for many years, helping surface relevant sites and driving traffic to them, according to a statement from Peter Schottenfels. More searches have resulted from new search features, which leads to more opportunities for sites to be discovered.
The trade association backing some of the biggest news publishers in the US slammed Google’s newly expanded AI Mode, which trades traditional search results for an AI chatbot-like interface. In a statement on Wednesday, the News/Media Alliance said the new feature is “depriving” publishers of both traffic and revenue.
The company announced that it was going to add a new tab in Search for all US users, and that it was expanding the role of Artificial Intelligence. When users enter a query, AI Mode serves up an AI-generated response alongside a list of relevant links.
“Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,” Danielle Coffey, the CEO and president of News/Media Alliance, said in the statement. The definition of theft is when you take content by force and use it for no return. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company.”
Google Search head Liz Reid said during her testimony that allowing publishers to opt out of individual features would add “enormous complexity,” according to Bloomberg. If a publisher said that they want to be in this feature, but not that feature, it wouldn’t work. It would be required to say every single feature on the page needs a different model.
