Google is reportedly looking to bleed publishers yet again — threatening to exclude them from a lucrative new artificial-intelligence partnership unless they allow the tech giant to train its AI bots on their valuable content.
In recent months, Google has been pitching news and entertainment publishers on a new pilot program that would promote their content in Google’s AI Overviews – a big boost to organizations that have faced significant declines in web traffic, the Information reported.
But in exchange, Google wants broad access to the publishers’ content, including the right to potentially use it to train AI bots, a person familiar with the project told the Information.
Google, which launched its Gemini chatbots in 2023, is driving a hard bargain.
It warned publishers that if they don’t agree to the new program, they will eventually lose out on payments from the current content-licensing arrangement, known as Showcase. Showcase is being ended, Google reportedly told some companies.
“This is Google’s game. They’re gonna dominate here,” said Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, a trade group that represents online publishers including the New York Times, the Washington Post and News Corp, The Post’s owner.
“There’s no fair deal discussions that can happen with Google. It’s really a matter of how much money they want to drop on an individual organization,” Kint told The Post.
A spokesperson for Google told The Post: “As people’s news preferences change, we’ve been expanding our partnerships through our News AI pilot program, working with a wide range of publishers to explore how AI can drive more engaged audiences.”
The spokesperson added that Google has been “testing features” to “help people cut through information overload, easily decide where to click out, and connect with news in different formats.”
Publishers have complained that traffic to their websites from search results has already plummeted – some by as much as half – since Google launched its AI Overview tool in 2024, which supplies an AI-generated summary of search results at the top of the page.
A Pew Research Center study found that when people see an AI Overview, they are half as likely to ever click a link from Google, and when they find an answer in an AI Overview, they are more likely to end their browsing session altogether.
Google has said it continues to send billions of clicks to websites every day and that the Pew study’s methodology was flawed.
One year after Google launched its AI Overview tool to the public, CNN saw traffic to its website fall by 30%, while Business Insider and HuffPost’s sites saw traffic plunge about 40%, according to an NPR report citing data from Similarweb.
That is a big hit to news publishers, who are heavily dependent on advertising – which is tied to how many clicks they can drive to their website – as well as audience revenue streams, like subscriptions and other paywalls.
Meanwhile, several publishers have filed lawsuits accusing tech companies of scraping data from their sites for use in training their AI bots – which has sent AI giants racing to secure content-licensing agreements.
In 2023, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the ChatGPT-maker had stolen content from its website to train its AI models.
OpenAI has since signed more than a dozen content-licensing deals with news and entertainment publishers.
Kint said tech giants have been holding the reins in these discussions — Google controls 90% of the search-engine market and was ruled a monopoly in a landmark antitrust case in 2024.
Google asked a federal appeals court to reverse the decision in May.
The company first announced the new AI pilot program in December, with initial partners including the Washington Post and the Guardian.
“They bundled the opt-out from AI training with the Search opt-out. So publishers, if they wanted to say, ‘Hey, you can’t train on my content for AI Overviews,’ then they had to opt out of Search,” Kint told The Post.
“If you’re opting out of Search, then you’re opting out of the internet.”
Publishers that currently participate in Google’s Showcase program, which highlights their content across Google News features, receive a flat annual fee.
If partners do not sign on to the new pilot program, they will continue to receive annual payments as long as Showcase remains in place, but these will end if the program does, according to the Information.
Google said it has been renewing Showcase agreements.
Those who sign up for the new pilot will be agreeing to broader content-use terms for the same flat annual fee, which is giving some publishers pause, the Information reported.