Google is facing another copyright lawsuit, with a group of leading publishers and bestselling author Scott Turow accusing the technology giant of using millions of copyrighted books without permission to train its Gemini artificial intelligence models.
The proposed class action, filed in a federal court in New York, has been brought by Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Turow and his publishing company, S.C.R.I.B.E. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status, an injunction to stop the alleged conduct and unspecified damages.
According to the complaint, Google repurposed books that were originally supplied for services including Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. While those agreements allowed limited uses such as searchable snippets and ebook distribution, the publishers contend they never authorised the use of their works to train commercial AI models.
The lawsuit further alleges that Google copied copyrighted books without consent or compensation, despite internally acknowledging the legal risks. It also claims Gemini is capable of generating long-form content that could compete directly with original works, potentially affecting authors' livelihoods and publishers' commercial interests.
Among the works cited in the complaint are The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin and Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket, which the plaintiffs allege were used without permission.
The lawsuit is the latest in a growing wave of legal challenges over the use of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems. Google joins companies including Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic, all of which have faced lawsuits from authors and publishers over their AI training practices. The case also adds to mounting scrutiny over how AI companies source training data and whether existing copyright laws are equipped to govern the rapid evolution of generative AI.
