A coalition of UK-based media and tech groups has filed a legal complaint urging the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to take urgent action against Google’s use of AI-generated summaries in its search engine – known as AI Overviews – which they argue is damaging the UK news publishing industry.
The complaint, submitted by the Independent Publishers Alliance, Foxglove, and the Movement for an Open Web, and backed by antitrust specialists Preiskel and Co, accuses Google of unfairly leveraging journalists’ content to train and serve AI tools without proper consent or compensation.
The filing requests interim measures to prevent Google from using publisher content in AI Overviews while the CMA prepares formal actions under its upcoming digital regulation powers.
“This complaint constitutes a formal submission that Google is abusing its market dominance… in the same way as the European Commission and European Courts have already found,” the submission states, referencing previous European rulings against Google for limiting visibility of competing content in its search results.
Why This Matters
The issue comes at a time when the CMA is preparing to designate Google as having “strategic market status” under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which would allow the regulator to demand more equitable practices between dominant platforms and content creators.
One key area of concern is that news publishers currently have no way to opt out of AI Overviews without also removing their content from traditional Google Search — a move that could effectively make them disappear online.
“To opt out of AI while staying in search should be a basic right,” the complaint argues, warning that without this, publishers risk irreparable harm from declining web traffic, visibility, and revenue.
Documents from a recent U.S. antitrust trial revealed Google had internally debated letting publishers opt out of AI summaries — but concluded this would threaten its monetisation model.
Industry Voices Raise Alarm
The complaint outlines how Google’s AI-generated results are now appearing above traditional search links, reducing the likelihood that users click through to original articles.
Carly Steven, SEO director at Mail Online, reported that clickthrough rates fall dramatically — by 56.1% on desktop and 48.2% on mobile — when AI Overviews are present.
Rosa Curling, director at Foxglove, was unequivocal in her criticism:
“It’s bad enough that Google’s AI products are stealing journalists’ work without paying for it. But worse still, that stolen work is used to give Google an advantage over the very news organisations they stole it from… The CMA needs to act urgently.”
James Rosewell, co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web, added:
“Google’s AI Overviews steal from publishers on two fronts. They take their content to train the AI, then steal their audience by placing the AI summary above the actual links. This is monopolistic behaviour, plain and simple.”
What the Complaint Demands
The filing calls on the CMA to require Google to:
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Allow publishers to opt out of having their content used in AI tools without being excluded from search results.
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Provide fair compensation for publisher content used in AI Overviews.
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Cease indexing or scraping news data for AI use while investigations are ongoing.
These demands aim to protect both competition and the public interest — as continued erosion of independent journalism would reduce media plurality in the UK.
CMA and Google Respond
A spokesperson for the CMA acknowledged the complaint, saying:
“We’ve proposed to designate Google as having strategic market status. This would allow us to address concerns in how Google operates search services in the UK, including AI Overviews.”
Meanwhile, Google defended its practices. A company spokesperson said:
“More than any other company, Google drives traffic to the web — billions of clicks every day. Publishers already have control over what appears in Search, including AI Overviews.”
Google claims that its AI features are designed to encourage more queries, giving publishers new discovery opportunities. The company also stated that publishers can use existing “snippet controls” to limit how content appears — though this has been linked to a drop in visibility.
In a recent blog post, Elizabeth Reid, Google’s VP of Search, described AI Overviews as one of Google Search’s most successful launches in a decade, pointing to a 10% increase in user engagement in markets like the US and India.
Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s head of news partnerships, said that AI Overviews are not intended to display for hard news topics, and claimed users spend more time on sites visited via these summaries than through traditional links — though critics argue the tool is still diverting traffic away from publishers.
What Comes Next
As the CMA prepares to introduce new powers in October, the groups behind the complaint are pushing for urgent, interim protections to prevent more damage to news outlets before formal regulations are in place.
“If the CMA waits too long,” Curling warns, “there may be nothing left to protect.”
