Nearly 300 French daily newspapers have filed a complaint with France’s competition authority over Google’s AI-generated search summaries. The Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale (APIG) announced the move on August 11.
APIG said the US company had deployed its AI Overviews and AI Mode services in France on July 22 without first negotiating payment for the press content they draw on. The tools place a synthesised answer above the conventional list of search links.
The alliance asked the Autorité de la concurrence to enforce undertakings Google gave the regulator in 2022. It argued that rolling out new uses of press content without prior authorisation or dedicated payment disregards those commitments.
Publishers were offered only an update to their existing licence, APIG said, the sole alternative being an opt-out that would cost them search visibility.
France’s audiovisual and digital regulator Arcom has put the traffic loss attributable to AI summaries at between 33 per cent and 38 per cent in European markets where the feature is live, the alliance said.
Alliance president Marc Feuillée, who is also chief executive of Le Figaro, said the fact AI systems were built on media content showed information carried considerable value. Publishers wanted that value shared and paid for, the association said, adding it was not seeking to halt innovation.
Google struck deals with 450 French publishers in 2022 covering neighbouring rights, the entitlement created by the 2019 EU Copyright Directive to pay publishers when platforms display their work.
The Autorité de la concurrence fined Google €250 million ($290 million) in 2024 for failing to honour parts of that settlement. On July 8 this year it imposed interim measures on Meta after a separate APIG complaint, ordering the company to negotiate in good faith with publishers.
Google told French broadcaster Franceinfo it had reviewed its payment system to take account of protected content appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It said publishers could choose whether to feature in the AI tools.
Critics say AI summaries compound falling advertising revenue because users who read them rarely click through to the original article.
The French case runs alongside action in Brussels. The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation on December 9, 2025 into whether Google used publisher and YouTube material for AI without appropriate compensation.
European Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera said at the time that the EU would “not allow gatekeepers to dictate those choices”. The European Publishers Council lodged its own complaint over AI Overviews in February.
Google was ordered in July to share search data with rivals and open Android to competing AI services. Days earlier it had lost a final appeal against a €4.1 billion fine over those same Android practices.
