It's not just a pure matter of law, and looking at it from that perspective is naive.
Legacy publishers in general (and a few big ones in particular, like der Spiegel) have been lobbying hard for legislatures to redirect big tech revenue to their failing businesses.
The focus on AI here is really just the continuation of that ongoing fight that has been raging for over a decade now. If it wasn't that, it would be some other wedge.
I'm not saying Google is squeaky-clean here, far from it. However, it's important to keep in mind that the main drive here is to get publishers paid, not to force Google to be accountable to some specific standards.
I think the argument isn't that it is copyright violation so much as it is anticompetitive. Google is using its monopoly in search to disadvantage its competitors in serving ads (other websites).
But on the other hand, when the summaries are accurate (which they aren't always!) they can be beneficial to consumers, so it isn't obviously bad either.
> I think the argument isn't that it is copyright violation so much as it is anticompetitive. Google is using its monopoly in search to disadvantage its competitors in serving ads (other websites).
But every news website does the same when they summarize the news from other news websites. Which they do all the time.
