Google Fined $272 Million by the French. Follow the Suit.
Exciting news! France's competition watchdog has fined Google €250 million (about $272 million) over concerns regarding the use of copyrighted information from media publishers in the European Union. This decision comes as a result of Google's AI chatbot Gemini, previously known as Bard, being trained on content from news publishers and agencies, violating the company's prior commitments. All companies should follow the suit.
This ruling is part of a larger story that began in 2020 when a French court mandated payments for the use of media producers' intellectual property by corporations, in accordance with 2019 EU copyright regulations. This meant that Google had to compensate publishers whose content was displayed on its search engines and other platforms.
In response to the fine, Google has stated that it agrees to settle in order to "move on" and focus on working constructively with French publishers. However, the tech giant believes that the fine is disproportionate to the issues at hand and does not adequately consider the efforts made to address concerns raised.
Google highlights that since the regulations came into effect, navigating negotiations with publishers has been challenging due to a lack of clear guidance, especially as the landscape of publishers continues to evolve. Despite this, Google emphasizes that it is the first and only platform to have signed licensing agreements with 280 French press publishers, which costs the company "several tens of millions of euros per year."
This development is significant as it occurs amidst a broader conversation about AI services scraping the internet for content to train their models, including copyrighted material. Publishers and newsrooms have expressed concerns that AI systems are using their content without permission or compensation.
This issue has led to actions such as news organizations blocking OpenAI from scanning their websites for content using its web crawler GPTBot. Additionally, in December, the New York Times sued Google's rivals Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI, alleging wide-scale copyright infringement by copying "millions" of its articles to train their AI models without permission.
This ongoing struggle over copyrighted content also involves book authors, such as Sarah Silverman, who have levied lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc. These legal battles highlight the complex intersection of AI, copyright law, and content creation in the digital age.