The European Union has launched an investigation into Google’s use of online content of publishers and creators for its AI systems which may have breached EU competition laws.

The European Commission will investigate if the Gemini creator owned by tech giant Alphabet is using its dominance to put other AI firms at a “disadvantage”.

The concern stems largely from Alphabet’s ownership of Google Search and YouTube, and will see if Google has been training its AI models on content creators and publishers without due compensation.

“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 EU Commission said.

The Commission will also investigate if Google used publisher or creator content to train its AI models without giving creators or content owners the right to refuse and still have their content published across Google’s platforms.

While YouTube creators are obligated to allow Google to use their content and data for a number of purposes as determined by Google’s terms and conditions, including AI training, content creators are not being compensated by Google for this. Further, other AI rivals and developers are barred from using the same content in their training by YouTube’s policies.

“We use content uploaded to YouTube to improve the product experience for creators and viewers across YouTube and Google, including through machine learning and AI applications,” YouTube said to content creators in September.

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Since its introduction, Google’s AI Overviews, which appear automatically at the top of the page following a Google Search and cannot be switched off via Google settings, has come under fire from publishers and content creators. The overviews rely on outsourced information from publishers which are not compensated for their work, and often mean that many Google Search queries do not end in a link click that would take a user from Google’s platform and onto a different website. This can significantly affect a website’s revenue streams.

“This complaint risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever. Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era,” a Google spokesperson said.

Wikipedia, which often had a portion of its content appear on a Google Search page prior to the deployment of AI Overviews, says it saw a 8% year-on-year drop in traffic as users turn to AI search overviews or use AI chatbots directly for information queries.