A month after opening a probe into Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google’s news ranking, EU regulators are now targeting the U.S. tech giant’s artificial intelligence training. GOOGL fell fractionally during pre-market on Tuesday.
Claim 50% Off TipRanks Premium and Invest with Confidence
- Unlock hedge-fund level data and powerful investing tools designed to help you make smarter, sharper decisions
- Stay ahead of the market with the latest news and analysis so your portfolio is always positioned for maximum potential
The European Commission on Tuesday announced the launch of a formal investigation into Google’s use of online content to generate AI responses for its AI Overviews and AI Mode features. AI Overviews is a feature of the Google Search engine that provides AI-generated summaries to queries by users.
Similarly, the AI Mode is a search tab available at the top of search results, where users can have a conversation with the chatbot about their queries. Both features are available in the Google Chrome browser — the former was introduced in the U.S. in May 2024, while the latter was rolled out starting in June this year.
Is Google’s Use of Online Content ‘Unfair’?
Specifically, the European Union’s executive arm — which acts as its competition watchdog — wants to determine whether Google abused its dominant position by using online content owned by web publishers and those uploaded to YouTube for these AI purposes without due compensation and without giving owners the right to refuse.
“The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage,” the Commission explained in a statement, adding that Google prevents rival developers from using YouTube content to train their own AI models.
The probe comes a few weeks after Google launched Gemini 3.0, which has been widely praised as its most advanced AI model so far. Google has previously said it only uses a portion of YouTube videos to train its AI models and usually follows agreements with creators and media companies.
EU Set to Water Down AI Act
The European competition watchdog has said it would treat the investigation “as a matter of priority,” although it said there is no timeline for how long the investigation would take. It noted that it has informed Google of the start of its investigation.
The probe also comes at a time when the political bloc has confirmed that it is undergoing a “reflection” that could see its artificial intelligence rules under the EU AI Act relaxed for Big Tech firms.
EU policies, including digital taxes targeting Big Tech firms, especially social media giants such as Google and Meta (META), have emerged as a test of the bloc’s ties with the Trump administration. Over the years, EU fines on Google have cumulatively totaled about $11 billion.
Is Google a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
On Wall Street, analysts continue to hold a Strong Buy consensus rating on Alphabet’s shares based on 29 Buys and seven Holds issued over the past three months.
At $320.15, the average GOOGL price target implies over 2% upside potential.
