Google has said that publishers will “eventually” get to opt out of generative AI features in search, the firm said in a raft of proposed changes in response to the UK competition watchdog’s recent digital market proposals for search engines.

Google was designated as having strategic market status (SMS) by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA); the regulator has since concluded a probe into how regulations for the search giant would be rolled out.

The probe aimed to give publishers more of a say in how their sites and data were being shown and used by Google, a move that was met with discerning support from publishers already reeling from Google’s hasty implementation of its AI overviews.

Publishers shared concerns about decreasing click through figures, the potential for bias rankings in search results, and the inability to opt out of having their information used for AI overviews as well as a lack of compensation for such use.

While Google’s offer to allow sites to “specifically opt-out of generative AI features in Search,” it has yet to quell concerns from publishers if opting out would impact their search rankings.

Google did address separately the issues of rankings, saying: “We don’t give our own products special treatment, a fact confirmed by the CMA’s own reviews.

“Some third-party proposals (unsupported by evidence) could expose our systems, and thus our users, to manipulation and abuse. This would make it harder to fight spam, and ultimately slow down our ability to launch improvements for UK users.”

It did also say that “Features like AI Overviews make links to sources more prominent, helping people discover web content remains central to our approach.”

As far as interoperability and search engine selection, Google says that Android users are already able to “easily choose their preferred services.”

However, “we know that people don’t like being bombarded with frequent, interruptive pop-ups, and that the proposal that we show more choice screens every year, on top of when you set up a new device, would annoy users.

“Instead, we’ve proposed a less intrusive, permanent central switch in your device’s settings, making it easy to change your default search engine any time, without the annoying interruptions.”

If these proposed changes will be enough to quell the CMA’s market dominance concerns, however, remains to be seen.