Google is facing a new copyright lawsuit from a group of publishers and authors who say the company used protected books to train its Gemini AI system without permission.
The plaintiffs include Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, author Scott Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E. They argue that Google also altered or removed copyright details from the works, a move they say helped hide how the model was built.
The complaint adds to a wider wave of legal challenges aimed at major AI developers. In recent months, courts in California have issued rulings that leaned toward AI companies on the question of fair use, while other cases continue to move forward.
The new filing points to Google's long-running book-related programs, including Google Books and Google Play, saying the company had access to copyrighted material for limited uses such as search snippets and bibliographic data, not AI training. The publishers claim that Gemini was trained on copies of those books without authorization.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where a different court may now shape how AI training and copyright boundaries are interpreted. The outcome could influence how future AI systems are built, licensed, and governed.
