French press body asks competition watchdog to take action over Google AI

By Inti Landauro

PARIS, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A French press association has asked the country's competition watchdog to take action against Google's artificial intelligence-generated article summaries, which the trade group says deprive newspapers and magazines of readers.

The group has called on the regulator to make a decision similar to that which ordered Meta to put forward a payment plan and resume talks with traditional media seeking fees for the use of their content by AI tools.

The Alliance of General Information Press, which represents French newspapers and magazines, opposes the recent rollout of AI-generated article summaries by Google without consultation, the alliance said in a statement.

Google did not respond immediately to a request for comment. 

Four years ago the competition watchdog forced Alphabet's Google to pay for using French press articles on its platforms, including its search engines.

Google was fined €500 million ($576.8 million) after the copyright dispute. 

"The unilateral deployment of new uses of press content, without prior authorisation or dedicated remuneration, disregards these commitments," the alliance said, adding that the communications regulator, Arcom, has estimated traffic on their sites has fallen by between 33% and 38% because of AI-generated summaries.

"The fact that AI is built upon media content means one single thing: this information has considerable value," Marc Feuillee, the alliance's president, said in the statement. Publishers demand this value is shared, he added.

($1 = 0.8669 euros)

(Reporting by Inti LandauroEditing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and David Goodman)