The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it had launched an antitrust investigation to assess whether Google violated EU competition regulations when it used online content from online publishers and the YouTube platform for artificial intelligence-related purposes.
The European Commission said: “This investigation will focus on verifying whether Google distorts market competition by imposing unfair terms on publishers and content creators, or providing itself with preferential access to such content, thereby putting competitors’ artificial intelligence model developers at a disadvantage.”
The European Commission pointed out that its core concerns include: Google may use publishers' online content to generate artificial intelligence-driven services on its search results pages without providing adequate compensation to publishers and giving them the right to object;
At the same time, the committee is also concerned about whether Google uses content uploaded to the YouTube platform to train its own generative artificial intelligence model without paying creators or providing rejection options.