A group of major book publishers and the author Scott Turow have sued Google, claiming it used millions of copyrighted books to train its Gemini AI without permission. The Google Gemini lawsuit calls it “one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history.”
The plaintiffs filed the complaint on 10 July in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs are Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Scott Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E. They are seeking class-action status.
The publishers say Google copied their books and journal articles to train Gemini, its generative AI system, without permission or payment. The Guardian first reported the claims, which the complaint sets out in full.
What the lawsuit alleges
The suit centres on works Google obtained for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar. Those services let Google show searchable snippets or sell ebooks. They did not, the plaintiffs argue, allow Google to copy the works to train commercial AI.
