The competition authority in France, Autorité de la Concurrence, has announced a €250 million fine against Google for failing to comply with copyright rules.
While Google was said to have failed to fulfill some obligations in the past, the company was accused of using content from press agencies and publishers to train its foundation model, Bard, which is now called Gemini, without notifying either them or the competition authority.
According to a statement released on Wednesday by the French Authority, this is the fourth decision issued by the Autorité in this case in four years.
The decisions, the authority said, come against the backdrop of the adoption of the French law of 24 July 2019 on related rights (transposing the EU directive on copyright and related rights of 17 April 2019), aiming to create the necessary conditions for balanced negotiations between press agencies, publishers and digital platforms.
Speaking specifically to the data used to train Google’s AI tool, Bard, the Autorité de la Concurrence said:
With regard to “Bard”, the artificial intelligence service launched by Google in July 2023, the Autorité found in particular that Bard had used content from press agencies and publishers to train its foundation model, without notifying either them or the Autorité.
“Google subsequently linked the use by its artificial intelligence service of the content concerned to the display of protected content, by failing to propose a technical solution for press agencies and publishers to opt out of the use of their content by Bard without affecting the display of content protected by related rights on other Google services, thus obstructing the ability of press agencies and publishers to negotiate remuneration.
“In view of these breaches, the Autorité has imposed a fine of €250 million on Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google Ireland Ltd and Google France.
“As Google undertook not to contest the facts, it was able to benefit from the settlement procedure. Google has also proposed a series of corrective measures to address certain breaches identified by the Autorité de la concurrence.”
The fine against Google has again brought to the fore the ongoing arguments over the use of media content to train AI. Just recently, the New York Times filled a lawsuit against, Google’s rival, OpenAi, accusing it of using its content to train its LLM, ChatGPT.
Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner, was also included in the lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.
The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.”
It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.