Setback for Google as EU court adviser sides with publishers against AI chatbot

By Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Google faced a setback on Tuesday when an adviser to Europe's highest court backed a complaint by publishers against its Gemini chatbot's use of their copyrighted articles to respond to queries from internet users. 

The case underscores growing tensions between publishers and big online platforms over the platforms' AI chatbots' use of press stories without what publishers say is proper compensation. The tensions have prompted complaints to EU and national antitrust regulators. 

Advocate General Maciej Szpunar is advising the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union in the case, which was brought by Hungarian website operator Like Company against US-based Google's artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. 

A ruling against Google, which could force the tech giant to pay fees for the use of such content, could throw a lifeline to online media such as Like Company. They have seen traffic dwindle as news summaries written by AI chatbots like Gemini increasingly replace traditional search engines' results, which include hyperlinks to the media websites. 

"When an LLM (large language model)-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher's website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher's right may be infringed in certain circumstances," Szpunar said.

Gemini's answers fall under the publishers' right of reproduction when chatbots access publications by unlawfully circumventing paywalls or other technical barriers, or when they reuse "the form of expression of that publication in a recognisable manner", he said.

Copyright rules do not protect the "mere facts" reported by press publications, but "only the specific form of expression", he added. 

On the other hand, he said, the use of material protected by copyright to train LLMs – AI systems that use vast amounts of text to generate human-like responses and summarize information – is "freely permitted under the text and data mining exception." 

The court, which follows the majority of its advisers' non-binding opinions, will rule in the coming months.

A Google spokesperson said: "European law's text and data mining exceptions are vital for Europe's competitiveness and AI development, and we acknowledge the Advocate General's opinion recognising that EU law permits AI training on publicly available information.

"Gemini learns linguistic patterns to create original outputs rather than replicating content, supported by extensive publisher controls that give rightsholders clear choice and the ability to opt out."

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Inti Landauro, editing by Bart Meijer, Susan Fenton and Jonathan Spicer )