Google hit with lawsuit from Rolling Stone publisher over AI Search tool

Google AI Overviews

Google’s AI Overviews feature is drawing its biggest legal fight yet. Penske Media, publisher of Rolling Stone, Variety, and Billboard, has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of misusing its content to fuel AI responses and draining traffic from its websites.

Why it matters

•Penske is the first major U.S. publisher to sue Google over AI Overviews, escalating tensions between media outlets and tech platforms.

•The lawsuit highlights growing concern that AI search results are eating into publishers’ traffic and ad revenue, threatening the business model of online journalism.

What Google is being accused of

•Filed in Washington, D.C.’s federal district court, the complaint argues that about 20% of Google searches linking to Penske’s sites now surface AI Overviews instead.

•Penske says this percentage is rising and blames the feature for a one-third drop in affiliate revenue through 2024.

•The company accuses Google of “siphoning” users who would otherwise click through to its sites.

What Google has to say

•Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company will “defend against these meritless claims.”

•He argued that AI Overviews actually “send traffic to a greater diversity of sites.”

Wider context

•Other lawsuits: Google previously faced similar claims from Chegg, which argued AI Overviews undercut its business.

•Industry trend: Media companies are increasingly pushing back against AI scraping. The New York Times sued OpenAI last year, while Anthropic recently paid $1.5 billion to settle claims around its Claude chatbot.

The bottom line

The lawsuit puts Google at the centre of publishers’ fight for survival in the AI age. If Penske succeeds, it could reshape how AI search features use and attribute third-party content.