According to The News International, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, an adviser to the EU Court of Justice, said that Google's AI chatbot Gemini may in certain cases breach copyright rules when it uses press publications. The details come from a report whose full original text could not be retrieved.
Background
The case stems from a lawsuit by Hungarian press publisher Like Company against Google over the use of articles from its online news portals. According to Türkiye Today, it is the first generative AI case to reach the European Court of Justice.
What the adviser says
Szpunar considers using material to train AI models to be freely permitted under the text and data mining exception. However, he noted there is no evidence that Like Company's articles were used to train Gemini. He recommended the court focus instead on the chatbot's answers: when an LLM-driven chatbot retrieves a publication, reuses it to generate an answer and provides that answer to users, the press publisher's right may be infringed in certain circumstances. Protected is not the mere facts reported but the specific form of expression.
Google's position
According to Türkiye Today, Google said Gemini learns linguistic patterns to create original outputs rather than replicating content, and pointed to publisher controls that allow rightsholders to opt out. The company welcomed the opinion recognising that EU law permits AI training on publicly available information.
Classification
The opinion is not binding on the court but is widely seen as a signal of the case's direction. A judgment is reported to be expected in about six months. For companies that use press content in AI answers or operate chatbots, the court's treatment of answers versus training could become relevant. Whether and how concrete obligations would follow remains open.
Sources
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