Competition Board investigates Google's artificial intelligence services

According to the statement made on the institution's website, Alphabet Inc, Google Ireland Limited, Google LLC, Google International LLC and Google Advertising and Marketing Ltd. It was decided to open an investigation to determine whether the "artificial intelligence previews" and "artificial intelligence mode" features offered by the economic entity consisting of Google (Google) within the scope of its search service violate the relevant article of the law.

Within the scope of the preliminary research, it was examined how "artificial intelligence previews and artificial intelligence mode" transformed users' information access behavior and thus whether they negatively affected the traffic to news publishers and other content producers.

It was also investigated whether the conditions in the contracts signed between Google and news publishers regarding the use of content constitute unfair contractual terms, whether "artificial intelligence previews and artificial intelligence mode" creates an exclusionary effect on news publishers, other content producers and artificial intelligence chat assistants, and whether there are different practices in terms of selecting news publishers' content as a source in "artificial intelligence previews and artificial intelligence mode" or entering into a contract regarding the licensing of the content.

In addition to opening an investigation, it was determined that the current indications on the part of news publishers of behavior described as "discriminatory and exploitative" reached a level of strong suspicion. Therefore, in accordance with the relevant article of the law, the Competition Board decided to implement interim measures to ensure that Google establishes conditions that will not discriminate between news publishers, reflect the economic value of content use, and enable publishers to exercise their preferences regarding content use in these services, independently of their visibility and indexing in other Google services.

Source: TRT Haber Ekonomi RSS (Open Press / Translated Full Text)