Google Gemini may infringe publishers' rights, EU court adviser says

An adviser to the EU's top court has backed publishers in a copyright dispute over Google's Gemini chatbot, saying its reuse of press articles may infringe their rights in certain circumstances

Google has faced a setback in Europe after an adviser to the European Union’s highest court backed publishers in a copyright dispute over the use of their articles by the technology major’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Gemini, Reuters reported.

 

Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, who advises the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), said the use of press publications by large language model-driven chatbots could infringe publishers’ rights under certain circumstances.

 

The case was brought by Hungarian website operator Like Company against Google over Gemini’s use of copyrighted articles to generate responses to users’ queries.

 

Szpunar said publishers’ rights could be infringed when a chatbot retrieves content from their websites, reuses it to generate an answer and provides that answer to users. This could happen if the chatbot accesses publications by circumventing paywalls or other technical barriers, or reproduces the original expression of an article in a recognisable manner.

 

 

However, he clarified that copyright protection does not extend to the facts reported in news articles, but only to their specific form of expression.

 

The opinion also draws a distinction between using copyrighted material to train AI models and reproducing protected content in chatbot responses, Reuters report said. Szpunar said training large language models using such material was permitted under the EU's text and data mining exception.

 

A ruling against Google could potentially require the company to pay fees for using publishers’ content. It could also provide some relief to online media organisations that have seen traffic decline as AI-generated summaries increasingly replace traditional search results containing links to news websites, Reuters reported.

 

Google said the EU's text and data mining exceptions were important for the region's competitiveness and AI development. The company also welcomed the opinion's recognition that European law permits AI training on publicly available information.

 

A Google spokesperson said Gemini learns linguistic patterns to generate original outputs rather than replicate content. The company added that it had publisher controls allowing rights holders to opt out.

 

The CJEU, which follows the majority of its advisers' opinions, is expected to deliver its ruling in the coming months, Reuters reported.