Publishers and authors including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier and Scott Turow have filed a class action accusing Google of using copyrighted books to train Gemini without permission. The TechCrunch reports on the new lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and also alleges altered or removed copyright information.
The plaintiffs say Google exceeded the limited permissions behind Google Books and Google Play by using copies for model training rather than searchable snippets. They cite an internal document said to have warned that the practice could expose Google to tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in fines. Google had not responded to TechCrunch's request for comment.
Analysis
This case targets a particularly awkward boundary for Google: it had longstanding access to books, but the claim is that search rights never became training rights. That distinction could make licensing records and dataset provenance operational necessities rather than legal cleanup. A New York ruling won't settle AI copyright nationwide, but it could pressure every model developer to show exactly how material entered training pipelines.
- Impact: High
- Confidence: Medium (multiple reports)
- Audience: Business
- What changed: Major publishers and authors sued Google over alleged unauthorized use of books to train Gemini.
- What to watch: Google's response and the court's first decision on dismissal or discovery.
- Reading time: 1 minute
