The owner of the Daily Mail has called for a crackdown onGoogle's artificial intelligence(AI) after warning that early tests of the technology in search were causing web traffic to crash.
DMG Media has written to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), stating that the search giant's "AI overviews" were causing a drop in readership from Google searches by as much as 89pc.
The publisher, which also owns the i paper, Metro and New Scientist, has called for the competition watchdog to extend its proposed regulation for the company to its Gemini chatbot and Google News service.
Google has disrupted many web publishers' business models in recent months by introducing AI overviews, in which answers generated by the company's artificial intelligence systems appear at the top of search results.
Web businesses are concerned that this will reduce the number of people clicking the list of links the company is best known for. They fear that the downturn will accelerate with the release ofGoogle's new "AI mode", which provides a much longer answer with less prominent links.
In a submission to the CMA, DMG said that the click-through rate - the number of Google searches that result in someone visiting the Mail website - fell from 25.2pc on regular desktop searches to 2.8pc when a user sees an AI overview, an 89pc drop. The drop was 87pc for mobile searches.
The company referred to independent research supporting traffic declines of this magnitude for the new AI mode.
Google's changes have been highly damaging to a range of publishers, although DMG Media noted in its submission that "one of the strengths of the Daily Mail website is the large amount of direct traffic it attracts".
DMG Media also accused Google of prioritizing links to YouTube - which the tech company owns - in its AI overviews, and rejected claims from Google that the feature leads to "higher quality traffic." In fact, the publisher said visitors who came to the website from AI overviews spent less time on the Mail's website.
The CMA is investigating whether it should classify Google's search engine and AI features as having "strategic market status," a designation meaning it could enforce changes such as giving publishers more control over how their content appears in results.
It may also intervene in negotiations between the company and publishers regarding licensing their content, with the CMA stating they may face challenges in "securing fair terms".
DMG, asas well as other publishers, have called for Google's Gemini chatbot to also come under the CMA's jurisdiction.
In its own submission, Google said the CMA's actions "create substantial uncertainty that hangs over our search business and necessarily weighs on decisions concerning our UK operations and plans for UK product launches".
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