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

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.