Judge Rejects Chegg and Penske Media Corp Claims Against Google Over AI-Generated Summaries
A US federal judge has dismissed lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media Corp against Google over allegations of antitrust law violations.
The companies, which publish education technology content and Rolling Stone magazine respectively, claimed that Google's AI-generated summaries of their articles drew readers away from their websites, resulting in lost revenue.
In a ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge Amit Mehta stated that Chegg and Penske's claims 'fail to get out of the starting gate', as they had only pleaded an expectation that Google would send them search traffic if their content was made available for free.
Mehta emphasized that antitrust laws do not substitute for legislators' power to address how innovation may cause economic harm, and that publishers have no agreement with Google over republishing their work or using it to train AI systems.