Publishers and authors sue Google for using copyrighted works to train Gemini

A group of publishers and authors filed a class-action lawsuit against Google in a New York federal court, accusing the tech giant of using copyrighted works without permission to train its AI platform Gemini. Plaintiffs include Hachette Livre, Cengage Group, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow, claiming Google deliberately removed or altered copyright info to hide that Gemini was trained on stolen materials.

The lawsuit says publishers had long provided books for Google Books search, but Google later used those copies and content from Google Play to train Gemini without authorization. Citing an internal Google document, plaintiffs warn that using copyrighted books for AI training could lead to "serious problems" and potential fines in the hundreds of billions.

This case adds to ongoing copyright disputes against AI firms like Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. While a California court previously ruled AI training as "fair use," the New York court may see things differently. Anthropic was fined $1.5 billion for similar issues, the largest copyright penalty in U.S. history.