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A group of major publishers has filed a lawsuit Googleaccuses the company of illegally using millions of copyrighted books to help develop Gemini’s artificial intelligence devices, in “the biggest copyright infringement in history”.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers – Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier – and American author Scott Turow.
These publishers say that Google has also used books that have been donated to a limited number of services such as Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. The services allowed Google to use the services in other ways — for example, to display keywords or sell ebooks — but not, the lawsuits say, to copy them for AI marketing training.
“In an effort to maintain control over the Internet, Google abandoned its original slogan ‘Don’t be evil’ and engaged in one of the largest copyright parties in history,” the suit says.
According to the complaint, the tech company made copies of the official textbooks to train Gemini without permission or payment, although internal discussions acknowledged the legal risks. The filing says Google has learned internally that it could face “$10Bs-$100Bs in fines” for using books provided by publishers on Google Play Books.
The publishers say Google’s move is hurting authors and many publishing companies, saying AI-powered content could disrupt book sales.
It says, for example, that Gemini can produce “a 100-page murder mystery set in a quiet seaside town full of mystery, which replaces the official murder mystery taught by Gemini” in 20 minutes for 39 cents. “No publisher or author can compete with that.”
The lawsuit names several specific books that the publishers say are among the illegal works used without permission, including NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, and Lemony Snicket’s Who Could That Be at This Hour?
This case adds to the growing number of cases in the field of AI and copyright. Authors and publishers have filed multiple lawsuits against Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, claiming that their copyrighted works were used without permission to train AI models. This includes copyright infringement by the author group the judge ruled in Meta’s favor June is over, and it’s a regular routine Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5bn to the authors who claim their books were used to train the Claude chatbot AI.
Earlier this year, Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published a “blank” book criticizing AI companies that use their work without permission.
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The new lawsuit follows an earlier attempt by Hachette and Cengage to join the existing lawsuits against Google brought by authors and artists in 2023. Google has refused to participate in the case, which prompted the publishers to take action.
The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages, a permanent injunction barring Google from further infringement, and a court order requiring the company to destroy unauthorized copies of their work used to train its AI systems.
Google did not respond to The Guardian’s request for comment.
