By Sheila Obeng-King
Publication Date: 2026-08-13 08:00:00
In today’s Digest, we discuss French publishers taking Google to the competition regulator over AI Overviews, Perplexity moving to block Time’s ads aimed at AI agents, and Disney+ and Hulu adding iHeartMedia video podcasts as streaming platforms race into the format.
French publishers cry foul over Google AI summaries
Nearly 300 French newspapers, represented under a single industry federation, have filed a formal complaint with France’s competition authority targeting Google’s AI-generated search summaries, arguing the tool risks driving even more traffic away from news publishers. The complaint adds to a growing list of grievances media companies have raised against Google’s handling of their content, as the industry continues to face steep declines in advertising income.
The core concern is that AI summaries pull directly from published journalism while simultaneously discouraging readers from clicking through to the source, since many searchers now find their answer without ever visiting the original article. Google has defended the feature, saying it helps users pose more complex questions, surface new content, and gives publishers tools to manage how their material appears.
Perplexity moves to block Time’s ads
Perplexity has confirmed it is preventing ads that Time began embedding within markdown versions of its webpages, content designed to be read by AI agents rather than human visitors, from influencing its search index. Per Digiday’s reporting, Perplexity has…
