Publishers, Scott Turow Sue Google Over Gemini AI Training
Publishers and author Scott Turow have sued Google, alleging it used copyrighted books without permission to train its Gemini AI models.
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A group of publishers and author Scott Turow have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using millions of copyrighted books without permission to train its Gemini artificial intelligence models.
According to an AFP report, the lawsuit was filed by Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Scott Turow and his publishing company S.C.R.I.B.E. in a federal court in New York. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status, an injunction to stop the alleged conduct and monetary damages.
The complaint states that Google took millions of copyrighted books that had been provided via services like Google Books for limited purposes and then used them to train Gemini. Publishers say the AI model now produces content that directly competes with works of authors and publishers.
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Copyright Battle:
The suit also claims that Gemini’s ability to churn out books at a pace and at a level that poses a new competitive threat to human writers. It also says the chatbot can mimic the creative style and expressive choices of individual authors when responding to user prompts.
It’s the latest case to test the legality of using copyrighted material to train generative AI models.
Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier and Turow filed a similar copyright lawsuit against Meta earlier this year in a New York court, accusing the company of using copyrighted works without authorisation to develop its artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
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The latest filing is the latest in a host of legal battles between AI companies and copyright holders.
In September, a US judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and several authors who sued the company for allegedly copying their books to train its Claude AI model. The court ruled that Anthropic’s use of books to train its AI was sufficiently transformative to be considered fair use under US copyright law, but that the use of pirated material was not similarly protected.
Meta also won a partial legal victory last year when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled its use of copyrighted works was fair use in a lawsuit brought by comedian Sarah Silverman, author Ta-Nehisi Coates and other writers.
