A group of major publishers has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegally using millions of copyrighted books to help create the Gemini artificial intelligence model, in “one of the largest violations of copyrighted material in history.”
The case, filed in New York federal court, is brought by three publishers – Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier – and bestselling American author Scott Turow.
Publishers argue that Google repurposed the books it supplied for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar. Those services allowed Google to use the functions in specific ways — for example, to display searchable snippets or sell ebooks — but, the lawsuit claims, did not allow Google to copy them for training commercial AI products.
“Desperate to maintain its online dominance, Google abandoned its early motto of ‘Don’t be evil’ and became involved in one of the largest breaches of copyrighted content in history,” The suit states.
According to the complaint, despite internal discussions acknowledging the legal risks, the tech company made copies of copyrighted books to train Gemini without permission or payment. The filing claims Google has flagged internally that it could face “$10Bs-$100Bs in potential fines” for using texts provided by publishers for Google Play Books.
Publishers say Google’s actions are hurting authors and the broader publishing industry, arguing that AI-generated content could have a negative impact on book sales.
It notes that, for example, Gemini can produce “a 100-page murder mystery set in a quiet seaside town full of secrets” in 20 minutes for 39 cents, an alternative to the original copyrighted murder mystery on which Gemini trained. “No publisher or author can compete with it.”
The lawsuit names several specific books that the publishers allege were among the copyrighted works used without permission, including NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and Lemony Snicket’s Who Could Be That at This Hour?
The case adds to the growing legal battle over generic AI and copyright. Authors and publishers have filed multiple lawsuits against Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, alleging that their copyrighted works were used without permission to train AI models. These include a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors in which a judge ruled in favor of Meta last June, and a landmark settlement in which Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors who alleged that pirated copies of their books were used to train the AI chatbot Cloud.
Earlier this year, thousands of authors, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman, published a “blank” book in protest of AI firms using their work without permission.
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The new case follows Hachette and Cengage’s first attempt to join an existing copyright lawsuit against Google brought by authors and illustrators in 2023. Google has protested their involvement in that case, prompting the publishers to launch a separate action.
The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages, a permanent injunction barring Google from continuing the alleged infringement, and a court order requiring the company to destroy any unauthorized copies of their works used in training its AI systems.
Google did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
