Turkey investigates Google’s AI search and orders fair treatment for news publishers

Turkey’s Competition Board has opened an investigation into Google’s AI search tools and ordered the company to establish conditions that treat news publishers fairly. The action puts both the use of publishers’ reporting and the traffic reaching their websites under scrutiny, alongside questions about how Google treats competitors and different news outlets.

From preliminary inquiry to formal investigation

The board began its preliminary inquiry on August 27. In a statement released Monday, it announced an investigation into Google and its parent company, Alphabet, covering AI search tools including AI Overviews and AI Mode.

AI Overviews provides AI-generated summaries that draw on news websites and other sources. That places news material inside Google’s own answers. The board is examining whether those answers divert traffic from the websites supplying the reporting, as well as the terms governing use of that content.

The preliminary inquiry examined four potential competition concerns. They span the relationship between Google and publishers, but also competition involving other businesses and the treatment of individual news outlets:

• Traffic diversion: whether AI-generated search answers reduce the visits that news websites receive.
• Content-use terms: whether Google imposes unfair conditions on the use of material from news websites.
• Competitor exclusion: whether Google’s AI search tools shut out competitors.
• Publisher favoritism: whether the tools favor some news outlets over others, making relative treatment part of the investigation.

Google’s response

Google had not responded to Al-Monitor’s request for comment when the outlet published its November 3 account. Whether the tools divert visits, impose unfair terms or disadvantage particular businesses remains the substance of the board’s investigation.