Publishers that decline Google's AI training rights will lose their annual Google News fees, according to a report. The EU is investigating similar practices.
Google is asking news publishers to give the company broad rights over their content – including the right to train AI models – if they want to keep getting paid. Those who refuse will eventually lose the annual fee Google currently pays them for featuring their articles in Google News, The Information reported Thursday, citing an unnamed source.
The program is a pilot. Publishers who join get their articles used in AI-powered overviews inside Google News and the Gemini chatbot. In exchange, Google gets permission to use the same content for AI training, according to the report.
A Google spokesperson told The Information that the company is expanding partnerships through the News AI pilot as people's news preferences shift. The company said in a December blog post that it now has commercial deals with more than 3,000 publications, platforms and content providers covering display rights and content delivery.
The old program paid publishers to appear in Google News with no AI training clause. The new offer kills that arrangement. Publishers face a choice: accept the AI terms, or lose the revenue stream.
The move comes as regulators and publishers push back. The European Commission opened an antitrust investigation in December into whether Google uses publisher content for generative AI without proper compensation. On Wednesday, a coalition of nearly 400 local and regional U.S. newspapers sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement, alleging the companies trained AI models on their articles without permission or payment.
Google is gambling that publishers need Google News distribution more than they fear handing over archives for AI training. The bet works if publishers see the AI overviews as a way to keep page views alive. It breaks if enough walk away, or if regulators force a different split.
The pilot will determine which of the 3,000-plus partners keep their fees and which get cut off. No deadline for a decision has been announced.
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