French regulators said Wednesday that Google failed to notify news publishers that it was using their articles to train artificial intelligence algorithms. This is part of a broader ruling against the company over its negotiating practices with news organizations.
The disclosure by the French competition authority amounts to a 250 million euro (approximately $270 million) fine for failing to negotiate fair licensing agreements with media companies to feature article links in search results. became part of. Officials also said the company was using news articles to train an AI chatbot, now called Gemini, without notifying media companies or giving them a way to prevent their content from being used until last September. also criticized.
Google has been embroiled in a long-running dispute with publishers over how much they pay to display news content in search results and other services. Mehta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, is also struggling with government efforts to force publishers in Australia and Canada to compensate.
The debate has taken on new urgency as media companies oppose the use of their articles to train AI systems. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to its AI systems.
The French regulator said legal questions regarding the fair use of news content to train AI applications are “still unresolved”. Still, authorities say Google violated past agreements with governments by using the former name of Google's AI chatbot and “failing to notify publishers that their content would be used in the Bard software.” Stated.
French authorities are siding with local publishers who say Google and other big tech companies are unfairly profiting from their content without paying them fairly. In 2022, regulators fined Google 500 million euros and ordered it to negotiate a licensing agreement with a French publisher.
Regulators said Google did not negotiate in good faith with the publisher because it did not share necessary information with monitors assigned to negotiate the deal. Authorities said Google used “opaque” data in determining how much it paid publishers and did not fully account for all the different ways the company was monetizing content produced by news organizations. Ta.
Google said the fine was “not proportionate to the issues raised” by regulators, but agreed with the fine announced Wednesday.
“We have made a compromise because the time has come to turn the page. We have taken a sustainable approach to connecting internet users with quality content and working constructively with publishers, as evidenced by our numerous agreements with publishers.” ,” the company said in a statement. statement.