The Lawsuit and What It Alleges
Google already had access to books through Google Books and the Google Play store. The problem, according to a new class action lawsuit, is that the company used those copies for something it was never given permission to do: train its AI system Gemini.
The lawsuit's plaintiffs feature major publishing houses such as Hachette, Cengage, and Elsevier, as well as best-selling novelist Scott Turow and the writers' organization S.C.R.I.B.E. According to the plaintiffs, Google deliberately took works from those restricted programs to feed its AI training process, fully aware it had no permission to do so. The lawsuit also alleges that Google removed or altered copyright information to hide that stolen materials were in the training data.
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The filing states, "Google illegally copied works from all these scope-limited programs for AI training, knowing it lacked authorization to do so."
Google's existing Google Books and Google Play store programs gave it a vast repository of copyrighted texts, but those programs had strict usage limitations. The plaintiffs argue that Google exceeded those limitations when it fed the books into Gemini's training pipeline, a move that the internal memo reportedly flagged as highly risky. The class action represents potentially thousands of authors and publishers whose works were used without permission, adding to a growing wave of litigation against AI developers over similar practices.
A Huge Precedent, Plus a Different Courtroom
This is not the first time a major AI company has faced this kind of heat. Anthropic received a $1.5 billion penalty for using stolen works in its training data, the biggest copyright-related fine ever imposed in the United States. Roughly 500,000 authors could claim a minimum of $3,000 each from that settlement. But numerous writers declined the settlement payments to keep their right to sue over AI training practices.
However, that settlement did not resolve the legal question of whether training AI on copyrighted material is fair use. Two initial rulings in California courts sided with the AI firms, determining that training on copyrighted materials qualifies as "fair use" under American law. Those California rulings do not give a positive sign for how other judges might treat the fair use argument, yet the issue is too complex for those decisions to set an indisputable standard. The outcome of this case could create a significant precedent for how copyright law applies to AI training, especially since the New York court is not bound by the California decisions.
The case was brought before a federal court in New York's Southern District, allowing a new judge to address the matter. Google had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
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