Publishers Sue Google for Allegedly Using Books to Train Artificial Intelligence

SadaNews - A group of publishers and authors has filed lawsuits against Google, accusing it of copyright infringement by using protected content to train its artificial intelligence models, subsequently producing content that directly competes with the works of the original creators.

The lawsuit states that "the scale and speed of the Gemini model's ability to produce books and compete with human writers is unprecedented."

The lawsuit was filed in a New York court as a class action by the publishing companies Hachette Book Group, SAGE Publishing, and Elsevier, along with author Scott Turow and his publishing company S.C.R.I.B.E, according to the Agence France-Presse.

The plaintiffs accuse Google of having "secretly copied millions of works" that it obtained through its Google Books service and other platforms for specific purposes, then used that material to train the AI model "Gemini."

They also assert that the content generated by "Gemini" directly competes with the original works authored by the rights holders.

The lawsuit adds: "Gemini even customizes its output to mimic the expressive elements and creative choices of specific authors."

This is the latest copyright-related lawsuit against companies developing artificial intelligence.

A group of publishers, including Hachette, SAGE, and Elsevier, alongside Scott Turow, had previously filed a similar lawsuit against Meta in a New York court last May.

Last September, a U.S. judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and several authors who accused it of illegally copying their works to train its AI model, Claude.

The ruling was seen as a partial victory for Anthropic, as the judge considered that using books to train the model could be deemed "fair use" under U.S. law, while other uses of pirated materials were considered illegal.