EU Launches Antitrust Probe into Google’s Use of Publishers’ Content and YouTube Videos for AI Training

EU Launches Antitrust Probe into Google’s Use of Publishers’ Content and YouTube Videos for AI Training

By Samaran, Founding Editor
WorldNow.co.in
Brussels | December 9, 2025

The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Alphabet Inc.’s Google over allegations that the tech giant used web publishers’ online content and YouTube videos without adequate consent or compensation to train its artificial intelligence models.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced on Monday that the probe will examine whether Google’s practices breach the European Union’s competition rules, particularly under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits abuse of a dominant market position.

“The preliminary investigation has indicated that Google may have scraped large volumes of third-party content—including news articles, blog posts, and YouTube videos—to train its generative AI systems, such as Gemini (formerly Bard) and other large language models,” the Commission said in a statement. “We are concerned that publishers and creators were neither informed nor fairly remunerated for this use.”

The investigation will focus on three key areas:
– Whether Google obtained proper licences or permissions for the content used in AI training datasets.
– The transparency of Google’s data practices and opt-out mechanisms for publishers and creators.
– Potential foreclosure of competing AI developers who lack comparable access to high-quality training data.

If proven, the practices could give Google an unfair advantage in the rapidly growing generative AI market, where access to vast, high-quality datasets is seen as a critical competitive barrier.

The move marks the latest chapter in Brussels’ long-running scrutiny of Google, which has already been hit with more than €8 billion in EU antitrust fines since 2017 for separate abuses related to Android, online shopping, and advertising.

A Google spokesperson responded: “We have been engaging constructively with regulators and are committed to complying with all applicable laws. We provide industry-leading tools for publishers and creators to manage how their content appears across Google services, including clear opt-out options for AI training.”

The Commission has not set a deadline for concluding the investigation, which could result in behavioural remedies, substantial fines—up to 10 per cent of Google’s annual global turnover—or both.

Industry bodies welcomed the probe. “Publishers have invested heavily in creating original content that is now being harvested at scale to power commercial AI products,” said a joint statement from the European Publishers Council and News Media Europe. “Fair compensation and consent must be the foundation of any responsible AI ecosystem.”

The investigation comes amid similar global debates over AI training data, with ongoing lawsuits in the United States against Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and other AI developers brought by authors, visual artists, and media companies.

WorldNow.co.in will continue to monitor developments in this case.