Google sued by US edtech firm Chegg over AI search summaries hurting traffic. Company’s response
A US-based edtech company has sued Google stating that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) search engine called AI Overviews is eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete.
The company called Chegg, an online education company which offers textbook rentals, homework help, and tutoring, said that Google is co-opting publishers’ content to keep users on its own site which erases financial incentives to publish, according to a report by news agency Reuters.
This will also eventually lead to a “hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust,” the report quoted the company as stating in its Washington lawsuit. It even added that AI overviews caused a drop in visitors and subscribers.
As a result, Chegg is now considering a sale or take-private transaction, the report quoted its CEO Nathan Schultz as having said on Monday.
Google’s response
However, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda called the claims meritless. “With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered,” the report quoted Castaneda as saying. “Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites.”
Despite this, Schultz said that their “lawsuit is about more than Chegg – it’s about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries.”
He also added that Google is coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features, leading to fewer site visitors. This violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product, according to the report.
This is also the second of such a lawsuit Google is facing from a single company. The previous one came from an Arkansas newspaper. That case is being overseen by US District Judge Amit Mehta.