The European Union has launched an investigation to assess whether Google is violating European competition rules into its use of artificial intelligence from web publishers and YouTube’s online content.
The European Commission said on Tuesday it would investigate whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, is putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.
“The investigation will specifically 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 disadvantaging developers of rival AI models,” the Commission said.
It said it was concerned that Google may have used web publishers’ content to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without properly compensating the publishers and without providing them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.
The Commission said it was also concerned about whether Google used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility of refusal.
“Content creators who upload videos to YouTube have an obligation to give Google permission to use their data for various purposes, including the training of generative AI models,” the Commission said.
It states that Google does not pay YouTube content creators for their content, nor does it allow them to upload their content to YouTube without giving Google permission to use such data. The commission said rival developers of AI models are barred by YouTube policies from using YouTube content to train their AI models.
Last month, the head of Google’s parent company said people should not “blindly trust” everything AI tools tell them.
Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said AI models are “prone to errors” and urged people to use them with other tools.
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In the same interview, Pichai warned that no company would be immune if the AI bubble burst.
Reuters contributed to this report
