EU Launches Investigation Into Google’s AI Tools
The European Commission has launched a sweeping investigation into Google, looking at how the company is using online articles and YouTube videos to power its expanding AI products. The big questions: did Google grab creators’ work without “appropriate compensation,” and were publishers or YouTubers ever given a real chance to say no?
At the heart of the probe are Google’s AI Overview summaries — the short, AI-generated blurbs now appearing above regular search links — and the newer AI Mode, which answers questions in a chat-like style. Both features rely heavily on outside content, and EU officials want to know whether Google’s massive appetite for training data has crossed legal lines.
Teresa Ribera, the EU’s competition chief, didn’t mince words. She said “Google may be abusing its dominant position as a search engine to impose unfair trading conditions on publishers” and stressed that “a healthy information ecosystem depends on publishers having the resources to produce quality content.” She also warned that the bloc will not let tech “gatekeepers” decide the rules for everyone else.
Publishers and digital rights groups have been sounding alarms for months. Some say traffic to their sites tanked after AI Overviews rolled out — one example raised publicly was a roughly 50% drop in clicks from Google search. Lawyer Tim Cowen, who advises several publisher groups, argued that “Google has broken the bargain that underpins the internet,” adding that the company puts its own AI results first and uses website material to train its Gemini model.
Google is pushing back hard. A spokesperson argued the case “risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever” and said the company will keep working with media and creative industries as they navigate what it calls “the AI era.”
But the Commission’s concerns go beyond news sites. Regulators are also probing whether YouTube videos — uploaded by ordinary users — were funneled into training data without notifying creators or giving them a clear opt-out. Some creators say refusing isn’t realistic anyway. AI campaigner Ed Newton-Rex described it as “career suicide” to pull work offline, saying Google “essentially makes it a condition” that anything posted can be used to “build AI that competes with you.”
This is Google’s second run-in with EU regulators in recent weeks, adding to tensions between Brussels and Washington. The company was fined nearly €3 billion earlier this year over online advertising practices, and now risks further penalties — including fines of up to 10% of their global annual revenue — if the antitrust probe finds wrongdoing.
The EU’s aggressive enforcement streak has angered some US lawmakers, especially after the bloc handed recently X a €120m fine. But European officials say the stakes are too high to back off. As Ribera put it, a free society relies on “diverse media” and an open creative landscape — and AI’s rapid rise shouldn’t come at the expense of those principles.
The investigation is just beginning, but its outcome could reshape how tech giants gather data and build AI tools — not just in Europe, but everywhere.
