Google's AI summaries are stealing traffic, publisher of Rolling Stone, Variety says in lawsuit

By Barbara Kollmeyer

Lawsuit believed to be the first of its kind by a major news organization

Rolling Stone publisher Penske Media is suing Google over the AI summaries that appear at the top of web pages.

The AI-scraped summaries that pop up when using Google's search function are stealing traffic and hurting its business, Penske Media Corp. has charged in a potentially landmark lawsuit.

Penske, the publisher behind more than 20 online brands such as Rolling Stone, Variety and Deadline Hollywood, filed the lawsuit late Friday against Google and its parent Alphabet (GOOGL) in a federal-district court in the District of Columbia. It accuses Google of abusing its search monopoly by forcing publishers to cannibalize their content in exchange for search referrals. Penske is reportedly the first major news company to sue Google over AI search summaries.

PMC said, while it has allowed Google to "crawl" across its websites help generate traffic, the search engine has been requiring "publishers to also supply that content for other uses that cannibalize or pre-empt search referrals," such as training for large-language models.

A Google spokesperson responded to the lawsuit in emailed comments: "With AI Overviews, people find search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend against these meritless claims."

Commenting on the lawsuit on X, Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint said publishers have "no good choices," when it comes to the design of Google search results: "(a) Opt out of AI use? You vanish from Search. (b) Stay in? You hand over content for free. The result: a "race to the bottom" where everyone's coerced into supplying AI content - and only Google benefits," he wrote.

A year ago, Google lost an antitrust case over in the same district where Friday's lawsuit was filed, with a judge ruling that Google acted illegally to preserve its monopoly on search. Online education group Chegg (CHGG) is also suing Google over AI overviews that it charges are eroding its business.

Shares of Alphabet rose 1.6% in premarket trading on Monday.

-Barbara Kollmeyer

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09-15-25 0824ET