Brazil opens Google AI probe

Brazil’s competition authority voted on April 23 to deepen an antitrust investigation into how Google uses news content, adding artificial intelligence summaries to the case. (gov.br) The regulator is CADE, short for Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense. Its tribunal backed interim president Diogo Thomson de Andrade’s recommendation to turn a long-running inquiry into a formal administrative proceeding against Google. (gov.br) CADE said the case now covers both Google’s collection of publishers’ material for search and the use of that material in AI tools that generate direct answers and recaps. Reuters reported the probe will test whether Google extracts value from journalism without proportional compensation. (reuters.com) The underlying fight is about what happens when a search engine stops acting like a list of links and starts acting like a summary box. If users get the answer on Google’s page, publishers can lose the clicks, ad impressions, and subscriptions that used to come from search traffic. (nucleo.jor.br) That question has been building in Brazil for years. CADE said the case began with a 2019 review of competition in search and the related news market, focused on Google’s use of content produced by publishers. (gov.br) The tribunal had been split earlier this month over whether to keep pursuing the “scraping” part of the case, according to Valor. On April 23 it voted unanimously to investigate AI use of news content and by a 4-1 majority to continue examining Google’s copying of publishers’ material for search. (valorinternational.globo.com) Google said in a statement carried by Reuters that it supports journalism through products, partnerships and financial programs, and that people continue to find news sites through Search. The company has argued in similar disputes that search sends traffic to publishers rather than taking it away. (reuters.com) Brazil has already been pressing large platforms on their relationship with news. In 2022, CADE opened another probe into Google and Meta over conduct tied to debate around Brazil’s “Fake News” bill, a separate case about possible abuse of market power in the public fight over internet rules. (chambers.com) The new proceeding does not mean CADE has found Google liable. It means the agency will gather more evidence on search, AI overviews, and publisher harm before deciding whether Brazil’s biggest search platform crossed the line from indexing the web to appropriating newsroom value. (gov.br)