Artificial Intelligence1 min read

Google AI chatbot's use of press items may infringe copyright rules, EU court adviser says

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

Advocate General Maciej Szpunar issued a non-binding legal opinion addressing whether Google's Gemini chatbot breaches reproduction rights when surfacing journalism. Szpunar noted that copyright safeguards specific forms of expression rather than unadorned facts, though training models on protected data remains allowed under text and data mining rules. If adopted by judges, the position could provide financial relief to publishers struggling with traffic losses caused by automated summaries.

Key points

  • Chatbots infringe press reproduction rights if they circumvent technical barriers or reus…: Chatbots infringe press reproduction rights if they circumvent technical barriers or reuse a publication's specific form of expression.
  • Online news outlets could secure vital content licensing fees if the European Union court…: Online news outlets could secure vital content licensing fees if the European Union court follows the adviser's opinion.
  • Media companies face falling site traffic as generative search summaries continue to repl…: Media companies face falling site traffic as generative search summaries continue to replace conventional outbound hyperlinks.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

BRUSSELS, Nov 3 : Google's use of press stories in its Gemini chatbot to respond to queries from internet users can infringe copyright rules in certain circumstances, an adviser to Europe's highest court said on Tuesday.

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

A ruling against Google, forcing the tech giant to pay fees for the use of their content could send 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.

"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 according to a court statement.

Gemini's answers fall under the publishers' right of reproduction when chatbots get access to publications by…

Artificial Intelligence