Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow filed a class-action lawsuit against Google in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs allege willful copyright infringement regarding the training of Gemini generative AI models.
The suit claims Google unlawfully used millions of copyrighted books and articles without permission. Google allegedly sourced this material from restricted programs like Google Books and Google Play, alongside data scraped from the internet.
Internal documents cited in the lawsuit reportedly show Google was aware of significant legal and financial risks. The plaintiffs seek statutory damages and a permanent injunction to halt the use of their works and destroy all unauthorized copies.