EU launches antitrust probe into Google's use of online content for AI purposes

[BRUSSELS] The European Commission has opened an antitrust probe to assess whether Google is breaching EU competition rules in its use of online content from web publishers and Youtube for artificial intelligence purposes, it said on Tuesday (Dec 9).

“The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage,” the Commission said.

It said it was concerned Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.

The Commision said it is also concerned whether Google has used content uploaded to Youtube to train its own generate AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse. REUTERS