"AI Changes Traffic" First Case: Rolling Stone magazine's parent company sues Google "AI Overview leads to a 1/3 decline in related revenue"

The parent company of Rolling Stone magazine has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing its search engine's artificial intelligence summary feature of illegally using its content, stealing website traffic, and harming revenue.

According to media reports on the 14th, Penske Media, the parent company of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, filed an antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last Friday evening. The lawsuit directly targets Google's "AI Overviews" feature at the top of search results, claiming it illegally utilizes the company's reporting content.

Penske Media presented direct financial impacts in the complaint: since the end of 2024, revenue generated through online shopping affiliate links on its website has decreased by more than one-third due to reduced traffic from Google. This case is the first lawsuit initiated by a major news media group for direct economic losses caused by Google's AI features.

In response to these allegations, Google spokesperson José Castañeda called them "baseless accusations," stating that "AI Overviews" make searches more helpful, create new opportunities for content discovery, and bring billions of clicks to various websites every day, even directing traffic to more diverse sites. Google claims it will defend against these allegations.

Core Accusation: AI Overviews "Siphoning" Traffic and Revenue

Penske Media's lawsuit elaborates on what it believes to be damage to its business model. The complaint points out that when users conduct searches, Google's "AI Overviews" directly provide integrated information summaries, allowing many users to obtain the answers they need without clicking on the original links. This mechanism directly "siphons" traffic that should flow to content publisher websites.

According to the complaint, approximately 20% of pages in Google search results containing links to Penske Media's websites feature "AI Overviews," and this percentage continues to rise. The company attributes the decline of more than one-third in affiliate link revenue since the end of 2024 to this. The complaint warns:

"Diverting and preventing users from accessing PMC (Penske Media Corp.) and other publishers' websites in this manner will have a profound harmful impact on the overall quality and quantity of information available on the internet."

Google's Rebuttal: AI Aims to Enhance Experience and Deliver "High-Quality" Visitors

In the face of Penske Media's accusations, Google insists that its AI features benefit the content ecosystem. In addition to the Gemini chatbot, which competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google has more broadly integrated AI into its core search products, including "AI Overviews" and optional "AI modes."

Google spokesperson José Castañeda argued that the website links accompanying "AI Overviews" can bring publishers "higher quality" clicks, as users accessing websites through these links tend to stay longer. Google's position is that AI features improve user experience while creating new opportunities for content discovery

The "Dilemma" of Publishers and Legal Appeals

Penske Media described the "dilemma" it faces in its lawsuit: either choose to prevent Google from indexing its website content, which would "destroy its business"; or be forced to accept Google's scraping of content, adding fuel to the AI system that threatens its entire publishing business. The lawsuit states:

"Every time PMC publishes an article on its website, it is essentially providing more training and foundational material for Google's AI system to generate AI overviews or optimize its models."

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction from the court to stop Google's alleged illegal activities and demands unspecified economic compensation. The plaintiffs in this case include 13 publications under Penske, such as Billboard, Variety, and Vibe.

Penske Media's lawsuit against Google is the latest in a series of legal conflicts between the media industry and AI companies. Previously, The Wall Street Journal and its parent company News Corp's New York Post sued AI search company Perplexity; The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Notably, the law firm representing The New York Times case also represents Penske Media.

Meanwhile, the industry is also exploring collaborative paths. Some tech companies have agreed to pay for the use of news content, such as News Corp with OpenAI, Amazon with The New York Times, and Google with the Associated Press, all of which have reached content collaboration agreements. Anthropic recently also agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit regarding its use of pirated books to train its models