Szpunar expresses opinion that AI chatbots may infringe copyright

Nov 4

1. 15:38

   IT Home · Artificial Intelligence

   Europe's Top Court Adviser: Gemini's Use of News Reports May Infringe Copyright Under Certain Circumstances

   In an opinion issued in the case brought by Hungarian website operator Like Company against Google, Advocate General Szpunar of the EU Court of Justice held that Gemini may infringe publishers' reproduction rights when it bypasses paywalls to obtain news content in its answers, or reuses the specific form of expression of reports in an identifiable way. He also noted that copyright does not protect mere facts in news reports, only their specific form of expression; using copyrighted material to train large language models is permitted under the current text and data mining exception. The opinion is not legally binding, but judges on the court usually refer to and adopt it.

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2. 15:38

   IT Home · AIRelated discussion

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   This post contributes to heat; it is not a formal report or confirmed fact.

3. 12:33

   heise online

   Advocate General of the European Court of Justice: AI chatbots such as Gemini may infringe copyright

   Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the European Court of Justice issued an opinion holding that AI chatbots such as Gemini that scrape and use news articles from websites to generate answers may infringe publishers' reproduction right and right of communication to the public. He proposed criteria for judgment: whether access was illegal, such as bypassing a paywall, and whether the answer reproduces the original expression in a recognizable way such that readers no longer need to open the original. The opinion is non-binding, and a ruling is not expected before 2027. The case stems from a lawsuit by Hungarian publisher Like Company against Google, alleging that Gemini reproduced its protected text without permission. On the question of AI training, Szpunar considered the two questions from the Hungarian court to be hypothetical and inadmissible, but noted that under the text and data mining exception, training models on protected works is "freely permitted." Google said it welcomed this statement regarding training.

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