Google faces another AI training lawsuit from major publishers

A group of publishers and authors have filed a class action lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using their copyrighted works to train its AI platform, Gemini.

The group of plaintiffs, which includes Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, author Scott Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E., also alleges that Google intentionally removed or changed copyright information on these works to “conceal… that its Gemini Models were trained on stolen materials,” according to the lawsuit.

This lawsuit is just one of many complaints that publishers, authors, and other copyright holders have filed against AI companies such as Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

While many of these lawsuits are still pending, two early court decisions in California have favored the AI companies, ruling that the use of copyrighted works for AI training is considered “ fair use ” under U.S. copyright law that has not been updated since before the existence of the internet.