Google's AI Previews Erode the Internet, Edtech Company Says In Lawsuit (reuters.com) 17
Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using AI-generated overviews to undermine publishers by reducing site traffic and eroding financial incentives for original content. Chegg claims this practice violates antitrust laws and threatens the integrity of the online information ecosystem. Reuters reports: This will eventually lead to a "hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust," the company said. The Santa Clara, California-based company has said Google's AI overviews have caused a drop in visitors and subscribers. Chegg was trading at around $1.63 on Monday, down more than 98% from its peak price in 2021.
The company announced it would lay off 21% of its staff in November. Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg, said on Monday that Google is profiting off the company's content for free. "Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg -- it's about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries," he said.
Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results, Chegg said. But Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors, the company said. Chegg argued the conduct violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product.
The company announced it would lay off 21% of its staff in November. Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg, said on Monday that Google is profiting off the company's content for free. "Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg -- it's about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries," he said.
Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results, Chegg said. But Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors, the company said. Chegg argued the conduct violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product.
Yes, but what do (Score:4, Informative)
He's probably right - the history of the internet over the last decade has been about harvesting other people's digital work for your own profit, especially if you're google.
but what Is he expecting - someone to do something about it?
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The Santa Clara, California-based company has said
So, probably a company? And they're mad because... AI-generated synopses are more popular than their content? Kinda sounds like a content problem, though I guess all of the Cool Kids are blaming AI for their problems.
I suspect it’s more about people just using the summary and never visiting a link, per TFA. I find iI often just read the summary if it answers my question.
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Even Duck Duck Go has a feature like this. You can ask it a question and you can click this little assistant button for a quick answer that also comes with a link.
As you mention, sometimes the answer I'm looking for is presented in this small blurb of information and I never click the link. I could see how this is hurting websites.
The only way to stop this would be to stop letting web crawlers suck all the content off your site for a summary.
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Then the sites get no visitors. It's the search engines destructively using their power. End of story.
Chegg's business is student cheating (Score:4, Informative)
Chegg is one of the scummiest companies out there.
Their absurd spike in COVID was entirely due to their business model being to help students cheat at homework and exams, which became enormously easier to pull off when all teaching and testing was online. The amount of time that college professors spent trying to mitigate and pursue Chegg-cheating for a few years was enormous.
What they're mad about is that ChatGPT has scooped them as the easier, and free, go-to method for academic cheating. Hence the 99% stock price drop. It's actually quite similar to the SCO-Linux disputes: shithole company files last-gasp nonsense lawsuits just as it circles the drain.
Since ChatGPT’s launch, Chegg has lost more than half a million subscribers who pay up to $19.95 a month for prewritten answers to textbook questions and on-demand help from experts. Its stock is down 99% from early 2021, erasing some $14.5 billion of market value. Bond traders have doubts the company will continue bringing in enough cash to pay its debts.
Wall Street Journal via MSN [msn.com]
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Don't have mod points to day, but... this! ^^^^^^^^^
Company whose business model is cheating publishers and professors out of their IP, gets salty when a search engine doesn't get them click-thrus to their pirated cheating-for-hire scheme? Irony isn't dead after all.
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Is it really? In this case, it sounds to me like the lawsuit is basically legitimate, at least insofar as it points to the wrongdoing of the LLM corporations. Now, maybe in a moral sense when it comes to plagiarism, they should be co-defendants rather than plaintiffs; but that doesn't mean that their case doesn't look like it has some prima facie merits. (IANAL &c., so
Zero Click Serps Are Real. Website'geddon is real (Score:1)
We bought into "sure, use our content for the chance as some traffic" for the last two decades. Now Google has changed that paradigm and is no longer keeping up their end of the bargian. Click through rates are dropping 10% month-over-month. They are 50% of what they where a year ago.
There are going to be some big sites tee off on Goo
'erode the internet' (Score:2)
Regardless of the legal merits of the suit or the company, they do make an interesting point. If I license you to scrape my ever-changing popular news site and offer up summaries of it, it does seem like fewer people will visit my site. Less eyeballs for me means less ad revenue etc. Already you can get AI summaries of national news of the day, and it may be that people will come to rely on that instead of the original material.
And so eventually, where does that original material come from? Less money avail
Fuck Chegg (Score:2)
We boomers/gen xers are producing the systems so that a generation of 'students' who are paying big money to be educatedare learning very little. I'll admit that AI is not the solution but the sooner that these money grabbing cheats are out of business the better. In my perfect world, no screens at school until 16, no screens at home until you have moved out.
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sorry, Chegg aren't cheats, they are cheat enablers.
I like the AI summaries (Score:1)
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It's more that Google just steals (Score:1)
They may erode all incentives for creativity, but they do so by stealing.