EU Court Adviser Says Gemini News Summaries May Infringe Publisher Rights

Google's Gemini may infringe EU publisher rights when it retrieves and reuses news articles in some circumstances, according to an opinion summarised by the Court of Justice of the European Union. First Advocate General Maciej Szpunar delivered the nonbinding opinion on November 3 in a dispute between Hungarian publisher Like Company and Google Ireland.

According to TechRepublic's account of the opinion, Szpunar said infringement could arise if an AI service accesses an article unlawfully, including by bypassing effective technical protections. It could also occur when an answer reproduces recognizable expression from an article so extensively that it substitutes for reading the original. Reporting the same facts alone would not meet that test.

Szpunar advised the Court of Justice of the European Union not to answer questions about model training because there was no evidence that Like Company's articles were used to train Gemini. His preliminary assessment also suggested that the publisher's specific chatbot example did not establish infringement, subject to findings by the Hungarian court. The EU court has not yet issued its ruling.