Major book publishers sue Google over Gemini AI stealing millions of copyrighted works, argue tech giant will ‘weaken the incentive to create’

Major book publishers, including Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, filed a federal class action lawsuit against Google, alleging that its Gemini AI system illegally scraped millions of copyrighted books and articles from online sources, including pirated sites and licensed databases, to train the AI. The publishers claim Google's actions undermine human creativity and the literary industry by generating AI substitutes that compete with original works, such as summaries, alternative versions of novels, and replacement textbook chapters.