Publishers and Author Sue Google Over AI Training of Books

A coalition of major publishers and a bestselling author filed a class-action lawsuit against Google on July 10, 2026, alleging the tech giant illegally copied millions of copyrighted books and journal articles to train its Gemini artificial intelligence models. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow as plaintiffs seeking damages and an injunction on behalf of a broader class of authors and publishers.

The complaint alleges Google sourced training data from multiple proprietary and unauthorized channels, including its own Google Books and Google Play Books services, online libraries, and known piracy websites. A central allegation is that Google used books provided by publishers under a prior legal settlement to build the Google Books search function, repurposing them for AI training without permission. The plaintiffs argue this agreement only allowed Google to display text snippets, not to copy entire works to develop a competing AI business.

The lawsuit claims this activity constitutes willful copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale, enabling...