Companies across a range of industries have been incorporating artificial intelligence into their businesses, generally to enhance the customer experience. Sometimes this goes too far, and other information is collected, reinterpreted but not correctly acknowledged as to its source.
AI in the hands of tech giants presents a number of questions concerning its relation to, and compliance with, antitrust laws as well as basic business ethics. One such company is Google – by far the biggest market player.
This has increased concern for businesses that create their own content, especially when Google’s AI ‘lifts’ material from website without proper accreditation, raising copyright concerns.
For example, Google’s recent extension of its AI mode provides more detailed content but without proper accreditation, according to the BBC. Instead of a list of search results showing links to other websites in blue type, people who choose “AI Mode” will be given an answer written in a conversational style, containing far fewer links to other pages.
One such company is WalletHub, which has continually produced information aimed at improving economic understanding and presenting information about the relative differences across U.S. states against a range of economic, environmental, social and political measures. WalletHub has recently enacted measures designed to protect its intellectual property. This is in response to AI companies like Google using publishers’ content without compensation. In terms of the main action, WalletHub has removed 40,000 pages of financial content from the reach of Alphabet and its Google engine. Instead, this content will now be exclusively available to logged-in WalletHub users.
This move, WalletHub has told Digital Journal, is the direct result of anticompetitive practices by Google and other AI companies: “which are pushing publishers across the world to a breaking point.”
As WalletHub points out: “Many publishers are going out of business in the face of big tech companies with a newfound thirst for thievery, and others are doubling down on efforts to increase their subscriber base.”
WalletHub has also released a new survey that shows consumers are not happy with the practices associated with AI companies. Some of the outcomes of interest are:
- Fair Pay for Creators: 62% of people think it should be illegal for AI companies to use people’s work without compensating them.
- Holding AI Companies Responsible: 2 in 3 Americans think AI companies should be sued for giving inaccurate answers.
- Demand for Clear Disclosures: Nearly 9 in 10 Americans think all AI content should have a prominent disclosure.
- Trust Real Expertise: Nearly 4 in 5 Americans say they trust human experts more than AI.
- Concern Over AI Manipulation: 83% of people are concerned they will get manipulated if search results get replaced by answers from an AI.
- Skeptical of AI Advice: Nearly 3 in 5 people say they’re not comfortable taking financial or medical advice from AI.
Commenting on the decision, Odysseas Papadimitriou, WalletHub CEO says: “The decision to prevent Google and other AI bots from accessing tens of thousands of WalletHub pages is not one we took lightly. We’ve spent the past couple of years exhausting every available alternative, but it’s impossible to invest in content when theft is allowed.”
Papadimitriou draws on an analogy to illustrate the point: “Imagine you’re a restaurant owner and you get approached by the mafia with two options. Either they shut down the road your restaurant is on and no customers can reach you, or they keep the road clear but open a restaurant next door to yours and make you serve their customers for free while they charge lower prices than you. Sure, some customers will get to you in the second scenario, but it won’t be enough to overcome the losses. Google behaves exactly like that, even after being declared a monopoly, which shows you how much regard they have for the U.S. justice system.”
Of particular concern to Papadimitriou is the topic of intellectual property: “Google went from organising the world’s information to stealing it, taking a sledgehammer to the implied contract the open web has relied on for so long. The deal has always been that publishers give search engines access to their content in return for visibility within the search results. Now, Google and other AI-powered companies are taking the content and giving almost nothing back in return. A lot of AI content is just copyright infringement hiding behind the veil of technological progress.”
Summing up and expressing exasperation with the tech giant, Papadimitriou says: “I’ve had enough, personally, so I’m taking my proverbial ball home. I hope other publishers will join me in taking their content in-house and starving Google and the other AI bots of oxygen.”
