{"slug": "google-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-its-ai-violated-copyrights", "title": "Google Faces Another Lawsuit Alleging Its AI Violated Copyrights", "summary": "Publishers Hachette Book Group, Cengage, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow filed a lawsuit against Google on July 10, alleging the company copied millions of copyrighted works to train its Gemini AI without permission or compensation. The lawsuit claims Google's AI can now create books that compete with human writers, violating copyright law. This is the latest in a series of copyright infringement cases against AI companies, with previous lawsuits against Meta and Anthropic yielding mixed court rulings.", "body_md": "Google \"cashed in\" on its relationships with publishers to share their works online \"by brazenly copying millions of copyrighted works\" to train its AI in violation of copyright law, a new lawsuit from publishers and authors alleges.\n\nHachette Book Group, Cengage, Elsevier and author Scott Turow [filed the lawsuit](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73603888/1/hachette-book-group-inc-v-google-llc/) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on July 10. If those names sound familiar, it may be because they teamed with publishers McGraw-Hill and Macmillan to [sue Meta over similar claims](/tech/services-and-software/academic-publishers-mcgraw-hill-macmillan-meta-copyright-ai-lawsuit-news/) in May.\n\n\"The scale and speed at which Gemini can create books and compete with human writers is unprecedented,\" the complaint says, \"and it can only do that because Google copied plaintiffs' and the class's works to train its AI.\"\n\nGoogle and lawyers for the publishers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.\n\nIn this specific case, the publishers are claiming that Google used their copyrighted content, available on the web and through Google Books, to train Gemini, without permission or compensation. This is a common claim among the many copyright infringement lawsuits brought against AI companies.\n\nCopyright is one of the most contentious legal issues for generative AI. Companies making AI need vast quantities of data to make their models better. Humans create much of that data, and a lot of what humans create is copyright-protected. So when AI companies scrape this data from the open web or acquire it through other means, lawsuits abound.\n\nGoogle has been sued for copyright infringement before. Disney [slapped Google with a cease-and-desist order](/tech/services-and-software/disney-slaps-google-with-cease-and-desist-claiming-massive-copyright-violations/) in December, when its [Nano Banana](/tech/services-and-software/google-nano-banana-pro-ai-image-generator-review/) AI image model and other video models were, in Disney's words, taking a \"free ride off Disney's intellectual property\" by creating AI content featuring its iconic characters.\n\nAI has become one of the most controversial issues in publishing. Hachette canceled the US release of [horror novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard](/tech/services-and-software/this-book-just-became-the-first-to-get-canceled-for-ai/) after multiple allegations that she used generative AI to write the book, angering the book community and violating the publisher's rules.\n\nIn two major copyright lawsuits against [Anthropic](/tech/services-and-software/anthropic-will-pay-1-5-billion-to-authors-in-landmark-ai-piracy-lawsuit/) and [Meta](/tech/services-and-software/meta-won-its-ai-fair-use-lawsuit-but-judge-says-authors-are-likely-to-often-win-going-forward/), the courts last year sided with the AI companies. But both judges were careful to say that future cases could swing the other way.\n\nIn the new lawsuit from Hachette and others, the plaintiffs wrote, \"Copyright law applies to AI companies, including Google, with the same force as every other company that has complied with these laws for decades.\"", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-its-ai-violated-copyrights", "canonical_source": "https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/publishers-hachette-scott-turow-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-google-ai/", "published_at": "2026-07-14 16:47:12+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-14 18:04:59.987324+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Google", "Hachette Book Group", "Cengage", "Elsevier", "Scott Turow", "Gemini", "Meta", "Anthropic"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-its-ai-violated-copyrights", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-its-ai-violated-copyrights.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-its-ai-violated-copyrights.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-its-ai-violated-copyrights.jsonld"}}