“Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era,” they said.
The EU’s investigation will also cover Google’s AI Mode, which gives people an answer in a conversational style with some links to other pages.
It is in addition to the tech giant’s existing search platform – providing an experience similar to its rivals such as ChatGPT.
Google’s introduction of its AI Overview summaries was met with concerns it could result in fewer visitors to websites.
Without people clicking on web pages, sites generate less money from advertising.
The Daily Mail previously claimed the number of people who clicked its links from Google search results fell by around 50% since Google introduced its AI Overview feature.
The Commission said it was concerned both web publishers and YouTube video creators were not being compensated or given the opportunity to opt-out of their content being used to train the company’s AI models.
Ed Newton-Rex from AI fairness campaigners Fairly Trained said it was “career suicide” for people to not publish their work on YouTube or online.
He told the BBC Google “essentially makes it a condition” of online publishing that the firm can “use your work to build AI that competes with you”.
“This investigation could not come at a more critical time for creators around the world,” he said.