Major publishers sue Google over AI training on copyrighted books

A group of publishers and author Scott Turow have filed a class action lawsuit accusing Google of using their copyrighted works without permission to train its Gemini AI models.

• The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow as plaintiffs.
• The plaintiffs allege Google copied books from its Google Books and Google Play Books services for AI training without authorization.
• The lawsuit cites an internal Google document that reportedly warned the company could face $10 billion to $100 billion in potential fines for using copyrighted texts from publishers.
• The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages, a permanent injunction against further infringement, and an order for Google to destroy unauthorised copies used in training.