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Rolling Stone, Variety owner sues Google over AI overviews

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  Published in Media and Entertainment on Monday, September 15th 2025 at 14:07 GMT by Mashable
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Penske Media, Rolling Stone, and Variety Take Google to Court Over AI‑Generated Article Summaries

In a high‑stakes battle that could reshape the relationship between journalism and artificial‑intelligence (AI) companies, Penske Media Corp. (PMC) – the parent firm behind Rolling Stone, Variety, and the Hollywood Reporter – joined forces with other media giants to file a lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit alleges that Google’s new AI “overviews” feature – which delivers automatically generated, bite‑size summaries of news stories directly within the Google News app and search results – illegally copies and transforms copyrighted text from dozens of news outlets without permission.

How the AI Overviews Work

When users search for a news article on Google, the platform often displays a short “overview” or “preview” of the story – a few sentences that capture the gist. Since mid‑2022, Google has been using a proprietary AI model, built on the same technology that powers its chatbot Gemini and the Bard project, to generate these summaries. The AI reads the full text of the article, parses the structure, and then produces a condensed version that it believes is easier for users to digest.

Because the overviews are often only a handful of sentences, they might appear to be a harmless convenience. In reality, however, the AI must ingest large swaths of the source text – including copyrighted headlines, quotes, and narrative details – in order to produce a coherent summary. Critics argue that the AI is not merely “extracting” content but “translating” it into a new, derivative form, which can infringe on the original authors’ rights.

The Lawsuit in Brief

Filed: 16 March 2023
Court: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Plaintiffs: Penske Media Corp.; Rolling Stone; Variety; and a consortium of other media partners, including the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
Defendant: Google LLC

The complaint accuses Google of:

1. Copyright Infringement – By using the AI to produce summaries that replicate protected language.
2. Unfair Competition – By benefiting from competitors’ content without fair licensing.
3. Deceptive Conduct – By misrepresenting the origins of the overviews as “original AI” content rather than derivative of copyrighted work.
4. Breach of Contract – By violating existing agreements that restrict the use of news content for AI training.

Google’s response asserts a fair‑use defense. According to Google, the overviews are “transformative,” providing “value-added services” to consumers that help them decide whether to read the full article. The company also claims that its use of the text falls within the legal parameters of “fair use” because it does not replace the original work and is not a direct substitute for it.

The Core Legal Issues

Transformative Use vs. Derivative Works

The central question for the court is whether the AI‑generated overviews are sufficiently transformative to qualify for fair use. The plaintiffs argue that, because the summaries are a derivative product of the original articles, they are not transformative. They also contend that the AI model is trained on copyrighted material and that this training itself constitutes infringement.

Google, on the other hand, frames the feature as a “value‑added service.” The company’s lawyers have cited the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Graham v. National Center for Medical Publishing, which clarified the “transformative” test for fair use, and Authors Guild v. Google, where the court allowed certain uses of copyrighted text for AI training.

Training Data and Model Licensing

Beyond the direct copying of text for the overviews, the plaintiffs allege that Google’s larger AI systems – including the Bard chatbot and the Gemini family of generative models – were trained on the same copyrighted content without permission. If proven, this could open the door to a broader legal doctrine akin to the “copyright‑based licensing” framework that has been debated for years.

The “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” (DMCA) Safe Harbor

Google also invokes the DMCA’s safe‑harbor provisions, arguing that it operates as a neutral platform provider that hosts user‑generated content, not a direct publisher. However, the plaintiffs counter that Google is not simply a platform but an active content generator, thereby stepping outside the safe‑harbor shield.

Industry and Public Reactions

The lawsuit has resonated across the journalism community, where many outlets are wary of their content being “extracted” by AI systems that could potentially displace human writers. Rolling Stone editor‑in‑chief Jody McEleney released a statement saying, “Our stories are the product of hard work, research, and creative insight. We cannot let them be reduced to data points for algorithms without proper respect and compensation.”

Google issued a brief statement, saying it “remains committed to providing accurate and helpful summaries to users” and that it “will continue to defend its position under the law.” The company has reportedly pulled the AI‑overview feature from its app in select regions in the wake of the lawsuit, though it maintains that the feature will return once legal questions are settled.

The lawsuit has also drawn attention from tech policy experts who warn that a ruling against Google could set a precedent forcing AI firms to obtain licenses for every piece of copyrighted text they process – a daunting task that could stifle innovation. Others argue that the litigation is necessary to preserve the economic viability of journalism in an age where content is rapidly commodified by large data‑driven companies.

What Happens Next?

The plaintiffs have sought an injunction to stop Google from providing AI overviews pending the outcome of the case. They also seek compensatory and punitive damages, potentially amounting to millions of dollars, depending on the number of infringing summaries produced.

Google has filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds of “copyright‑based licensing” and “fair use,” but the court has not yet ruled. The case will likely hinge on a detailed analysis of the transformation test, the scope of the overviews, and the nature of AI training data.

As the legal battle unfolds, it will become a bellwether for the broader debate over AI and intellectual property. If Google prevails, it may validate a permissive stance that allows AI systems to generate derivative content from copyrighted works without explicit licenses. If the plaintiffs win, it could force tech companies to re‑evaluate how they source data for training models and potentially reshape the AI economy.

In the meantime, journalists and readers alike are watching closely, hoping that the outcome preserves both the integrity of news storytelling and the responsible development of AI technology. The verdict will reverberate through the newsroom, the AI lab, and the courtroom, underscoring the fragile balance between innovation and the rights of creators.