Information

Google's Ai and the use of newspaper content: Agcom's report to the EU ready

Diego Ciulli, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google in Italia, replied that he did not believe that 'for Ai Overview and Ai Mode people would stop reading newspapers, it would be worrying if they did'

by Rome Editorial Staff

18 February 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Lasorella: 'Risk is that people no longer read newspapers'
The Digital Service Act
Google's answer

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Agcom will send a report to the European Commission on Google's artificial intelligence programmes. The reason is related to the use of newspaper content by Ai Mode and Ai Overviews, which provide the search engine with synthetic answers to users' searches.

Lasorella: 'The risk is that people no longer read newspapers'

The issue - i.e. the relationship between the press and Google's Ai Mode - has been brought to the attention of the Communications Guarantee Authority, as its president Giacomo Lasorella said. 'The German Authority has already done so and we are about to make a report to the European Commission, it is a clear case of impact on information,' he explained at the conference Epistemia and Artificial Intelligence at La Sapienza University in Rome.

"By going to AI Mode, the risk is that we will no longer read newspapers," he added. "There is a risk of squeezing the freedom of information and the right of citizens to access multiple sources of information enshrined in Article 3 of the European Freedom Act.

The Digital Service Act

"This is just one of the cases seen by the regulator," added the Agcom chairman, "where discipline impacts services. We are trying to tackle these issues effectively together with the Commission and the other European regulators, but we need the support of the knowledge that the scientific world brings us, the current complexity requires constant dialogue between institutions and research'.

Lasorella went on to explain that the European Digital Service Act, the EU legislation regulating digital platforms, has taken on 'a central role' and represents to date 'the only world-wide protection against a changing world'. "Looking at the glass half full, a lot is being done," Lasorella concluded, "but as a systemic vision I would say that there is a need to imagine a broader role than the individual national authorities, since the relationship between the EU Commission and the countries of origin of digital platforms compresses the role of national authorities.

Google's answer

At the same conference, Diego Ciulli, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google in Italia, replied that he did not believe that 'because of Ai Overview and Ai Mode people would stop reading newspapers, it would be worrying if they did. They are a natural evolution of the search engine, we are improving the previous way of doing research not the access to information. The search engine tries to sort authoritative sources and in addition to a summary we give in-depth links to that source,' he added, 'that is the difference between a search engine and a chatbot. At Mode it remains a search engine, while Gemini is your assistant to do creative work, confusing the two is like putting dishes in the washing machine'.

"AI Overview and AI Mode are very good at giving facts quickly, they don't do any kind of analysis or in-depth analysis, I don't think they will do that in the near future either," concluded Ciulli. "On the contrary, what we are seeing is that people are searching more, even in Europe, since AI Overview and AI Mode have been there, and this inevitably brings more traffic out of Google. Also, new languages are developing, because people want to know more and listen to two-hour podcasts. This has happened thanks to these tools'.