2 min readJul 15, 2026 10:08 PM IST
A group of major publishers has sued Google, alleging the company illegally used millions of copyrighted books to train its Gemini artificial intelligence models, according to a report by Emma Loffhagen in The Guardian.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, was brought by Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, along with bestselling author Scott Turow, who is known for his legal thrillers. The Guardian reported that the complaint describes the alleged conduct as “one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history.”
According to the report, the publishers argue Google repurposed books originally supplied for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar. Those arrangements permitted narrow uses such as displaying searchable snippets or selling ebooks, but not, the suit claims, copying works to train commercial AI products.
The filing further alleges Google was internally aware of the legal risk, having flagged potential fines in the “$10Bs-$100Bs” range tied to using publisher-supplied texts without authorization.
The publishers also argue that AI-generated content threatens the broader book market. The Guardian cited an example from the complaint describing how Gemini could generate a full murder-mystery novel in 20 minutes for 39 cents — output the suit says no human author or publisher can compete with. Specific titles named as allegedly used without permission include NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and Lemony Snicket’s Who Could That Be at This Hour?
The case adds to a growing wave of copyright litigation against AI developers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. A judge ruled in Meta’s favor in a similar authors’ lawsuit last June, while Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors in September 2025 over claims involving pirated books.
Earlier this year, authors including Kazuo Ishiguro published a symbolic “empty” book protesting unauthorised AI use of their work.
