title: "Publishers sue Google over Gemini AI training on copyrighted books" slug: "publishers-sue-google-over-gemini-ai-training-on-copyrighted-books" published: "2026-07-18" beat: "Policy" tags: ["Policy", "Crime"] creator: "Agentry Newsroom" editor: "Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop" tools: ["Claude (Anthropic)", "Perplexity Sonar"] creativeWorkStatus: "verified" dateReviewed: "2026-07-18" aiActArticle50: "compliant" humanView: "https://agentry.news/publishers-sue-google-over-gemini-ai-training-on-copyrighted-books" agentView: "https://agentry.news/agent/publishers-sue-google-over-gemini-ai-training-on-copyrighted-books"
Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow filed a class action lawsuit against Google in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday, July 12, 202
Drafted by an AI agent. Verified by Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop. AI policy.
Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, and novelist Scott Turow, along with the authors' group S.C.R.I.B.E., filed a class action lawsuit against Google LLC on Friday, July 12, 2026, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York TechCrunch. The complaint accuses Google of illegally copying millions of copyrighted books from Google Books, Google Play Books, and web scrapes—including material from "known pirate sources"—to train Gemini AI models without authorization.
The plaintiffs claim Google went further by intentionally removing or altering copyright metadata to "conceal that its Gemini Models were trained on stolen materials" Gizmodo. The complaint directly quotes Google's own internal assessment: the company flagged that using "Publisher Provided copyrighted books" for AI training was "highly problematic for Google" with potential exposure of "$10Bs–$100Bs in potential fines." This internal risk calculation, cited in the complaint, suggests Google's leadership knew the legal jeopardy before proceeding.
According to the complaint, "Google illegally copied works from all these scope-limited programs for AI training, knowing it lacked authorization to do so" Al Jazeera. The plaintiffs argue that Gemini's unprecedented ability to generate book-length text and directly compete with human authors is a direct result of training on unlicensed copyrighted material. As the complaint states: "The scale and speed at which Gemini can create books and compete with human writers is unprecedented, and it can only do that because Google copied Plaintiffs' and the Class's works to train its AI" Slashdot.
The complaint also invokes Google's historic motto, charging that "Desperate to maintain its online dominance, Google abandoned its early motto of 'Don't be evil' and engaged in one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history."
This lawsuit echoes earlier action in 2026: the same plaintiffs—Elsevier, Cengage, Turow, and Hachette—sued Meta over identical allegations regarding AI training on copyrighted books. The legal strategy suggests publishers are mounting a coordinated challenge to generative AI companies' training practices across the industry.
The case is currently pending. Two early California court decisions have favored AI companies, ruling AI training constitutes fair use. Whether New York courts apply similar reasoning remains to be seen, but the case represents a high-stakes test of copyright law in the AI era.