Google Faces Lawsuit Over AI Overviews Impacting Publishers

Google is rapidly integrating artificial intelligence across its services, and Search has become one of its most ambitious testing grounds. The company’s AI Overviews feature—instant summaries that appear at the top of search results—has now sparked legal trouble.

Google Faces Lawsuit Over AI

Penske Media Corporation (PMC), the parent company of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Google’s AI summaries are diverting traffic and revenue away from publishers.

According to the complaint, AI Overviews push source links further down the results page, meaning users are less likely to visit the original websites. Instead, readers get quick summaries written by Google’s AI, reducing incentives to click through. PMC claims this has led to declines in site traffic, advertising revenue, and affiliate earnings. The lawsuit also argues that publishers have little choice but to allow their content to feed into Google’s AI systems or risk being excluded from search visibility.

At an AI summit in New York, Markham Erickson, Google’s VP of government affairs and public policy, defended the feature. Speaking to The Verge, Erickson acknowledged that traditional “10 blue links” had long defined Search, but said user preferences are shifting toward contextual answers and summaries.

“We’re not abandoning the 10 blue links,” Erickson said. “But users increasingly want contextual answers and summaries. We want to provide that while still driving people back to valuable content on the Internet.”

Still, critics argue the shift is hurting publishers. Earlier this year, the News/Media Alliance also criticised AI Overviews, calling them “the definition of theft” for depriving publishers of both traffic and revenue.

As the lawsuit unfolds, the case could set a precedent for how AI-driven search tools balance user convenience and publisher sustainability in the digital ecosystem.