The launch of Google’s AI tools in France is accompanied by commitments on publishers’ remuneration, but raises concerns about the impact for the press.
Google is preparing to take a new step in the integration of artificial intelligence into its search engine in France. AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google’s AI-powered features, will arrive in France during the summer. This launch comes as the American group has increased discussions with French press publishers and made several commitments relating to content remuneration, in a context of persistent tensions around neighboring rights.
A deployment under surveillance
Already available in most countries around the world, these two features are based on the group’s language model, Gemini. This combines the thousands of pages indexed on the search engine to generate summaries at the top of the search results, above the classic links. In France, AI Overviews and AI Mode will fall within the framework of neighboring rights.
Google undertakes to remunerate publishers for these features under related rights. Editors who agree to be featured in AI Overviews and AI Mode responses will be compensated accordingly. Each time a press title is cited in a summary, with a link to its site, Google will count an impression. Publishers will be paid based on the total number of impressions.
The group is also committed to sharing “clear information and metrics, dissociating impressions generated by AI from those resulting from ‘classic’ research”. According to the information communicated to publishers, they received from Google a file of nearly one hundred pages detailing the new methodology. This document should allow them to decide whether or not they wish to join AI Overviews and AI Mode.
This launch takes place in a particular context. Google was not able to deploy “AI Overviews” and “AI Mode” in France as quickly as it would have liked. The group was blocked because it had committed to the Competition Authority that the existence of negotiations on related rights would not affect the indexing, classification or presentation of content during the duration of the negotiations. The sanction of 250 million euros which the firm received in March 2024 for non-compliance with its commitments in the context of neighboring rights has encouraged it to exercise a certain caution.
As part of the French launch, Google is also introducing the possibility of an opt-out for publishers. In theory, the latter will have the “choice” of appearing or not in these AI functionalities. This setting will not be used as a “ranking signal for search results outside of these AI generative search features.” In other words, a publisher’s decision to participate or not in these tools will not have an impact on its general indexing in the search engine.
“All press publications having a ‘neighboring rights’ agreement in France with Google will be offered an update of their contract in order to take into consideration this new display of their content,” explains a source close to the matter.
Persistent concerns from publishers
Despite these commitments, French publishers remain worried. They fear that the arrival of these disruptive tools will drastically reduce their web traffic from search, and therefore their advertising revenue. Impact studies carried out in countries where AI Overviews and AI Mode are already effective confirm this apprehension. The most pessimistic even mention the advent of a zero-click Internet where responses generated by AI would replace the traffic returned by search. Publishers fear that the remuneration paid by Google for related rights for AI Mode and AI Overviews will not compensate for the loss of revenue linked to the drops in traffic that these features are likely to cause.
“We wish to sign a collective remuneration agreement with Google before the launch of AI Overviews and AI Mode in France,” declares Marc Feuillée, president of the Alliance de la presse d’information général and general director of the Le Figaro group. The press manager also questions the guarantees that publishers have today regarding the real impact of these new features on their traffic and income. “Are French publishers still protected by the commitments made by Google to the Competition Authority?” he asks.
A turning point for Google and online search
The announcement of AI Overviews in May 2024 then, a year later, that of AI Mode marked a turning point at Google. In May 2025, during its annual Google I/O event, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, presented AI Mode as the biggest revolution in the history of its search engine. “The growth has been incredible,” Google enthused last month. Barely a year after its launch, AI mode has exceeded one billion monthly users, and the number of queries has more than doubled each quarter since its launch.
This French deployment is part of Google’s strategy to catch up with ChatGPT’s breakthrough among the general public in 2022. The group has since multiplied innovations, launching several AI-powered features intended for both the general public and businesses, from the search engine to the Android operating system through its office solutions.
