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

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

Tue, August 11, 2026 at 2:15 PM GMT+3 1 min read

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)