Google suffered a setback at Europe's highest court on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advises the Court of Justice of the European Union. He said Gemini's use of publishers' articles to answer user queries may breach copyright rules. The case pits Hungarian website operator Like Company against Google's AI chatbot.
Szpunar said a publisher's rights may be infringed "in certain circumstances" when an AI chatbot pulls an article from a press website, reuses it and passes the answer to a user. He said this applies in two cases. The first is when chatbots unlawfully get around paywalls or other technical barriers. The second is when they reuse "the form of expression of that publication in a recognisable manner".
He said copyright does not cover the "mere facts" in news stories, only the way they are written. He also said that using copyrighted material to train large language models is "freely permitted under the text and data mining exception". He found no evidence that Google had used the Hungarian publisher's articles to train Gemini.
His opinion is not binding. However, the Luxembourg-based court follows most of its advisers' opinions. It will rule in the coming months. According to Reuters, a ruling against Google could force the company to pay fees to use such content. That could help online media such as Like Company. Their traffic has fallen as AI summaries replace search results that link to news sites.
A Google spokesperson said the EU's text and data mining exceptions are vital for Europe's competitiveness and AI development. The company welcomed the part of the opinion that says EU law allows AI training on publicly available information. Google said Gemini learns language patterns to create original answers instead of copying content. It added that publishers have controls that let them opt out.
The European Publishers Council took a different view. Executive director Angela Mills Wade said allowing search indexing is different from allowing AI answers that replace original reporting. She said publishers depend on Google to reach readers, while Google increasingly gives AI-generated answers directly to users. "Publishers should not have to choose between search visibility and protecting their rights," she said.
Reuters said the case reflects growing tension between publishers and big platforms. The dispute is over AI chatbots using news stories without what publishers call proper payment. It has already led to complaints to EU and national antitrust regulators.