Publishers Sue Google Over AI-Generated Books and Articles

Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier have filed a federal class action suit against Google over allegations that the tech giant has been using copyrighted literature to train its artificial intelligence platform Gemini. The publishers claim that Google scraped their works from online pirating sites and licensed databases without permission, then used them to generate AI-created copies of books and articles.

The lawsuit alleges that Google’s actions will ‘weaken the incentive to create’ by allowing the tech giant to profit from copyrighted materials without compensating authors or publishers. The suit charges Google with four counts of copyright infringement and claims that the company has assembled a vast trove of copyrighted materials through its Gemini AI system.

Google obtained the copyrighted material by scraping online pirating sites and licensed databases, including those used for its Google Books and Google Scholar platforms. However, it was specifically forbidden from copying these works for other purposes, yet allegedly did so many times over to train its multi-billion-dollar generative AI system.

The publishers claim that Google deployed a purpose-built service designed to generate content that creates direct substitutes for their original work. This includes allowing users to type requests into Gemini and receive full or large portions of text from novels and articles, as well as generating new books.

AI-generated works can then be sold, competing directly with the publishers’ material. The suit claims that these substitute works take multiple forms, including verbatim copies of entire works, replacement chapters of academic textbooks, summaries, alternative versions, and inferior knockoffs that copy creative elements of original works.

Gemini’s outputs are tailored to mimic the expressive elements and creative choices of specific authors, making it difficult for publishers or authors to compete with. For example, Gemini can generate a 100-page murder mystery in just 20 minutes for $0.39 – an unprecedented scale and speed that displaces legitimate sales of books and journal articles.

Internal documents cited in the suit show that Google employees noted the potential risks of using copyrighted materials without permission or compensation. Despite this, Google allegedly did so anyway, flagging internally that it was ‘highly problematic’ but proceeding with the use of these works to train its AI models.

The publishers claim that Google could have simply bought the rights to copy the work and paid them accordingly, making this a classic case of copyright infringement. While AI technology may be new, the legal principles at the center of this case are not – copyright law applies equally to all companies, including those using novel technologies like Gemini.

This lawsuit joins a growing number of publishers and authors suing artificial intelligence companies over similar copyright infringement claims. Hachette has also filed joint suits with McGraw-Hill and MacMillan Publishing against Meta’s AI in May, highlighting the increasing concern about AI-generated content competing directly with human-created works.