Authors, publishers sue Google over alleged AI copyright infringement

Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow have filed a lawsuit in a New York federal court, accusing Google of copyright infringement while training its Gemini AI models. The nearly 60-page complaint alleges that Google copied books from Google Books and web scrapes without permission, and that internal documents warned of legal risks including up to $100bn in fines. The suit claims Google did not inform authors or publishers of the copying, arguing that any fair use defense is undermined by the alleged unlawful acquisition. The case highlights complex legal issues around AI training on copyrighted material.