Google is facing a lawsuit from Penske Media Corporation (PMC), which accuses the tech giant of illegally using its publications’ content to generate AI summaries that undermine their business.
PMC, which owns titles including Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Vibe, and Artforum, filed the case against Google and its parent company Alphabet. It marks the first legal action aimed specifically at Google’s “AI Overviews,” though other AI developers have faced copyright lawsuits from authors and publishers.
The lawsuit alleges that Google “wield[s] its monopoly to coerce PMC into permitting Google to republish PMC’s content in AI Overviews” and to use that content in training its AI systems. PMC argues that the arrangement threatens the “fundamental bargain that supports the production of content for the open commercial Web”, in which publishers allow Google to index their sites in exchange for traffic.
“As a condition of indexing publisher content for search, Google now requires publishers to also supply that content for other uses that cannibalize or preempt search referrals,” the lawsuit claims. It adds that opting out of the system would require PMC to withdraw entirely from Google search, which the publisher described as “devastating.”
The filing also points to “significant declines in clicks from Google searches since Google started rolling out AI Overviews,” noting that reduced traffic has already cut into advertising, subscription, and affiliate revenue. “These revenue streams rely on people actually visiting PMC sites,” the company said.
Google has rejected the claims. “Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites,” spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement. “AI Overviews make Google search more helpful and create new opportunities for content to be discovered. We will defend against these meritless claims.”
The lawsuit comes at a delicate time for Google. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that the company had acted illegally to preserve its monopoly in online search. However, the court stopped short of ordering structural remedies such as breaking up parts of the business, citing growing competition in artificial intelligence.
