Newsrooms have complained for two years that AI answers feed on their work and keep the traffic. Google appears to have started paying some of them, on terms it has not advertised.
The Information reported a pilot that rewards publishers based on how much their material contributes to AI Overviews, AI Mode and the Gemini chatbot. Digiday first wrote about the program, which began less than a year ago and now covers roughly 100 publishers.
Payments range widely. One early participant has reportedly earned more than $1M over twelve months. A publisher that joined a few months ago has collected about $50,000 to $60,000.
Regulators have moved faster. Britain ruled in June that Google must let publishers opt out of AI search features.
The European Union went further. It opened an investigation into the effect on web traffic and has ordered changes to the search engine.
Google has not described the payments as licensing. The pilot reads more like a hedge, a contained experiment that shows what publishers will accept before any wider deal becomes mandatory.
