Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of Rolling Stone, has become the first major American media company to sue Google over its AI summaries, as The Verge reported in September:
The company claims that the AI Overviews that often appear at the top of Google search results leave users with little reason to click through to the source, hurting traffic and illegally benefitting from the work of its reporters.
The lawsuit highlights a growing concern across the media industry — even Wikipedia has stated a noticeable decline in traffic, as users increasingly get answers directly from AI summaries.
Image: Immo Wegmann / Unsplash
Let’s be straightforward: major AI systems scrape information from the web and profit from it, leaving the true creators with fewer visitors and, consequently, less income. Many media outlets and individuals may eventually go bankrupt if this trend continues.
Journalism represents only the tip of the labor pyramid exploited by AI. Anyone who creates unique content — especially writers and photographers — effectively works for tech giants for free, making billionaires even richer and more powerful.
AI may be convenient from a user-experience perspective, but so is copy-pasting or downloading images “from Google” for commercial use. Convenience is not an excuse for stealing from others.
A possible solution is to assess the value of content across media outlets and major social media platforms. AI systems can evaluate uniqueness, relevance, and, based on these factors, the overall worth of content. Tech companies should then pay creators for any material published on the web, since many AI systems rely on and profit from everything available online.