What's happened
Publishers including Hachette, Cengage and Elsevier have filed a New York class-action against Google, alleging that Gemini was trained on copyrighted books supplied for limited services without permission. The suit seeks damages, an injunction and destruction of unauthorised copies. Several similar actions have been launched against major AI firms amid ongoing debates over fair use.
What's behind the headline?
Contextual frame
- The suit adds to a wave of copyright litigation targeting AI developers. It contrasts with California rulings that have favoured AI firms on fair use, underscoring a split in U.S. courts.
- The decision may hinge on how narrowly “training” can be construed as a fair use or transformative use.
Potential implications
- If the court sides with publishers, it could constrain how tech firms source training data and push for compensation for rightsholders.
- A ruling against Google could affect other AI players and future agreements with publishers.
Reader takeaway
- Readers should watch how judges interpret what counts as “training” and whether snippets or full copies are treated differently in practice.
How we got here
The filing, led by Hachette, Cengage and Elsevier, argues Google copied books provided for Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar to train Gemini. This follows earlier suits against Meta and ongoing settlements in other AI copyright cases. The case cites internal warnings about potential fines.
Our analysis
The Guardian reports on the suit filed in federal court in New York by Hachette, Cengage and Elsevier, joined by Scott Turow and S.C.R.I.B.E.; TechCrunch describes related actions and prior settlements; France 24 provides broader context on related lawsuits against Google, Meta and Anthropic.
Go deeper
- Is Google likely to face a ruling soon?
- How might this affect book availability or pricing if training data is restricted?
- Which publishers are most exposed in the broader AI copyright wave?
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Scott Turow - American author
Scott Frederick Turow is an American author and lawyer. Turow has written 11 fiction and three nonfiction books, which have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. Films have been based on several of his books.
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Elsevier - Dutch publishing and analytics company
Elsevier, Inc. ( EL-sə-veer) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as The Lancet, Cell, the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, Trends, the Current Opinion series, the online citation database Scopus, the SciVal tool for measuring research performance, the ClinicalKey search engine for clinicians, and the ClinicalPath evidence-based cancer care service. Elsevier's products and services include digital tools for data management, instruction, research analytics, and assessment. Elsevier is part of the RELX Group, known until 2015 as Reed Elsevier, a publicly traded company. According to RELX reports, in 2022 Elsevier published more than 600,000 articles annually in over 2,800 journals. As of 2018, its archives contained over 17 million documents and 40,000 e-books, with over one billion annual downloads. Elsevier has been criticized for its high profit margins and copyright practices. The company had a reported profit before tax of £2.295 billion with an adjusted operating margin of 33.1% in 2023. Much of the research that Elsevier publishes is publicly funded; its high costs...
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Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
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