EU court adviser ties Gemini copyright infringement to reproducing articles' expression, not facts
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
In future chatbot disputes, the key issue may be whether an answer replaces the original article by reproducing its text rather than merely using facts; a final ruling is still to come.
Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general at the Court of Justice of the EU, has issued an opinion in Hungarian publisher Like Company's case against Google. He proposed considering whether the chatbot accessed articles unlawfully, for example by bypassing access restrictions, and whether its answer reproduces the publication's recognisable form of expression to such an extent that the user no longer needs to open the original. Facts reported in the news are not themselves protected by the publisher's right. Szpunar also noted that model training is permitted under the EU's text and data mining exception, and that the case contains no evidence that Like Company's articles were used to train Gemini. The opinion is not binding on the judges. Google said Gemini learns linguistic patterns to produce original answers and that rights holders can opt out of having their material used.