Hachette Book Group, Cengage, Elsevier and author Scott Turow filed a class action lawsuit against Google on July 10 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint alleges that Google copied millions of copyrighted works to train its Gemini AI model without permission or compensation. It also claims the AI can generate substitute works that compete with the originals.
The plaintiffs stated that Google reproduced the material with full knowledge that it violated copyright law. They further alleged that Google removed copyright management information to hide its sources and failed to add effective guardrails to prevent Gemini from producing infringing outputs.
This marks the latest in a series of legal challenges from publishers and authors against AI companies over training data. The same group of plaintiffs has an ongoing class action against Meta filed in May on similar grounds.
Google and the plaintiffs' lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new case.
