Brussels, Belgium: Google's artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini could be in breach of copyright rules when it uses press publications in certain instances, an adviser to the EU's top court said Tuesday.
It is the first generative AI case to reach the European Court of Justice, after Hungarian press publisher Like Company took Google to court over the use of articles from its online news portals.
Using material for training an AI model is "freely permitted under the text and data mining exception", Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said.
But he noted there was "no evidence that Like Company's articles" had been used to train Gemini.
Szpunar recommended the court focus in its ruling on the Gemini chatbot's answers.
"When an LLM-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher's website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher's right may be infringed in certain circumstances," the adviser said, referring to large language models.
He said the publisher's right does not protect "mere facts" reported but "only the specific form of expression".
A judgment is expected in around six months.
A Google spokesperson said "Gemini learns linguistic patterns to create original outputs rather than replicating content, supported by extensive publisher controls that give rightsholders clear choice and the ability to opt out."
The spokesperson also welcomed "the advocate general's opinion recognising that EU law permits AI training on publicly available information".
The opinion is not binding on the court, but it will be influential and widely considered a sign of the direction the case is taking.
