Penske Sues Google Over AI Overviews and News Content

Penske Media Corporation, the owner of Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard and other entertainment titles, sued Google in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday, alleging the Alphabet unit illegally repurposes its journalism to create AI-generated summaries that divert readers and harm the publisher's business. The complaint accuses Google of using its dominance in general search to coerce publishers into permitting their content to be used in AI Overviews and to train the companys AI models, and seeks treble damages, restitution, an injunction halting the practices and a jury trial.

The lawsuit contends that Google historically provided indexing and search referrals in exchange for crawled content, the bargain that underpins much of the commercial web. In recent years, Penske alleges, Google has tied that access to a separate transaction by requiring publishers to allow their articles to be republished in AI summaries and used for model training. The complaint says that publishers that refuse cannot realistically opt out without disappearing from Google search, a consequence Penske calls devastating. The company also says it has recorded significant declines in click...