Alphabet Google faces – Alphabet’s Google faces an EU antitrust investigation over its use of web publishers’ online content and YouTube videos to train its artificial intelligence models, the European Commission said Tuesday. The Commission, which acts as the EU competition enforcer, said it was concerned that Google could use publishers’ online content without adequately compensating them and without giving them the option to refuse use of their content. It also expressed the same concerns regarding Google’s use of YouTube videos uploaded by its users.

“Google could abuse its dominant position as a search engine to impose unfair trading terms on publishers by using their online content to provide their own AI-powered services such as ‘AI Overview’, which are AI-generated summaries,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera told a conference. “This case is once again a strong signal of our commitment to protecting the online press and other content creators and ensuring fair competition in emerging AI markets,” he said. Last week, the European Commission opened an investigation into Meta’s plans to block AI rivals from its WhatsApp messaging system, highlighting increased regulatory scrutiny in the area.

The US tech giant risks fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue if found guilty of violating EU antitrust rules. Google’s AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional hyperlinks to relevant webpages and are shown to users in more than 100 countries. It began adding ads to AI overviews last May.

The EU investigation into Google followed a complaint by independent publishers in July.