Publishers Seek to Join Lawsuit Against Google Over AI Training

Publishers Hachette E-book Group and Cengage Group requested a California federal courtroom on Thursday for permission to intervene in a proposed class motion lawsuit in opposition to Google over the alleged misuse of copyrighted materials used to coach its synthetic intelligence programs.

The publishers mentioned of their proposed criticism that the tech firm “engaged in one of the vital prolific infringements of copyrighted supplies in historical past” to construct its AI capabilities, copying content material from Hachette books and Cengage textbooks with out permission.

Spokespeople for Google didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the publishers’ bid, which may enhance the potential damages at stake within the case.

“We imagine our participation will bolster the case, particularly as a result of publishers are uniquely positioned to deal with lots of the authorized, factual, and evidentiary questions earlier than the Court docket,” Maria Pallante, CEO of the publishers’ commerce group the Affiliation of American Publishers, mentioned in a press release.

The lawsuit at the moment entails a gaggle of visible artists who sued Google for allegedly misusing their work to coach an AI-powered picture generator. The case is certainly one of many high-stakes lawsuits introduced by artists, authors, music labels and different copyright homeowners in opposition to tech firms over their AI coaching.

Anthropic settled a lawsuit for $1.5 billion final 12 months with a gaggle of authors suing over its use of their work to coach its AI chatbot Claude.

The publishers on Thursday cited 10 examples of their textbooks and different books that Google allegedly misused from authors, together with Scott Turow and N.Okay. Jemisin to coach its Gemini massive language mannequin. They requested the courtroom for an unspecified quantity of financial damages on behalf of themselves and a bigger class of authors and publishers.

U.S. District Decide Eumi Lee will resolve whether or not to approve the publishers’ request to hitch the case.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Enhancing by Rod Nickel)