Artificial Intelligence1 min read

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

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The non-binding legal opinion was issued by Advocate General Maciej Szpunar concerning a lawsuit filed by Hungarian website operator Like Company against Google. Szpunar determined that Gemini may violate copyright laws when it retrieves, reuses, and delivers a publisher's protected form of expression directly to a user, though raw facts themselves remain unprotected. In contrast, he concluded that training large language models on copyrighted works is broadly allowed under current text and data mining exceptions. Judges at Europe's highest court generally adopt the advocate general's formal guidance in their final rulings.

Key points

  • Chatbot operators face potential infringement claims when their systems reuse and deliver…: Chatbot operators face potential infringement claims when their systems reuse and deliver expressive journalistic content to end users.
  • Developing and training artificial intelligence models remains insulated from infringemen…: Developing and training artificial intelligence models remains insulated from infringement claims by existing statutory data mining provisions.
  • The advisory opinion strongly hints at the final ruling because European top court judges…: The advisory opinion strongly hints at the final ruling because European top court judges typically adhere to the advocate general's advice.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

BRUSSELS, Nov 3 : An adviser to Europe's highest court said on Tuesday that the use of press publications by Google's artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini may in certain circumstances infringe copyright rules.

"When an LLM-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," Advocate General Maciej Szpunar 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 large language models is "freely permitted under the text and data mining exception."

Szpunar was advising the court in a case brought by Hungarian website operator Like Company against Google.

Opinions of the advocate-general are usually followed by the court's judges.

Artificial Intelligence