Liberté! Egalité! Royalties! French newspapers take on Google

Instead, France’s press alliance – APIG, which represents nearly 300 newspapers – has decided to take on Google by filing a complaint to the country’s competition authority over its new AI-generated summaries. Though users elsewhere in the world are now accustomed to looking something up and being confronted with a few AI lines appearing just below their search bar, the tech behemoth only introduced the feature in France in late July. The fight back has already begun.

“The fact that artificial intelligence is built upon press content demonstrates a simple truth: that this information holds considerable value”, the federation’s president said in their statement. “Publishers are not calling for an end to innovation; they are asking for that value to be shared and for the use of their work to be remunerated.”

As they see it, the change happened without anyone in the media being duly consulted or even warned. This was especially galling as France passed a law in 2019 making the use of press content conditional, requiring both prior authorisation and remuneration. A year later, the Competition Authority was forced to sanction Google for unfair practices, ordering it to negotiate in good faith with media publishers.

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In 2022, the company was fined €500m for failing to comply with these requirements, and made a legally binding commitment later that year to be more transparent in its dealings, and to actually negotiate in good faith with all relevant parties. According to the Alliance, these AI-generated summaries violate that commitment. 

They are right in being both incensed and worried. As a study by the French media regulator found this year, European markets where the summaries were deployed saw a 33% to 38% drop in traffic to newspapers and other news sources. 

The Gallic press, like their cousins virtually everywhere else, is already struggling enough as it is – why should they be made to suffer even more just so tech behemoths can make ever more money? Journalists have had to deal with ever-increasing cuts in ad revenue and an ever-changing online market in which they have little agency. Surely asking them to essentially feed Google’s AI for free is crossing one line too many. 

Well, for the French anyway. Though their fight against Big Tech, pyrrhic as it often seems, ought to be applauded, it seems worth wondering where everyone else is. The press is suffering just as much on this side of the channel, and on the other side of the pond, and across the rest of the world. 

Democracy is in retreat in dozens of countries and autocracy is on the rise. Fake and misleading news often dominate the agenda, and AI slop is threatening to take over the entire internet. Many of these changes, gradual as they were, happened so smoothly that few people in power sought to even question them, or try to curtail them. 

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Attempting to act on the creeping malevolence of Google, Meta and their fellow travellers in the mid-2020’s may feel like shutting the stable door as the horse has already galloped halfway across the continent, but doing something today is still better than thinking about doing it tomorrow. 

Over in Westminster, Andy Burnham has pledged to be the people’s champion, and to be on the side of the little guy. One way to do this would be to try and join forces with France in attempting to hold Big Tech to account, in a way that would benefit both journalists and their readers. 

As the Press Alliance put it, this isn’t about deciding to stall technological progress, or embracing reactionary ideals. Instead, taking on Silicon Valley would show that the government is trying to build a version of the future that’s worth fighting for. It would also send a powerful message to the voters who were turned off by Keir Starmer’s meekness: not all David will win against their Goliaths, but trying is always worth it.