Google was heavily fined for using press data to train AI

Euronews said that on March 20, the French competition authority (ADLC) imposed a fine of 250 million euros (270 million USD) on Google due to a long-running dispute with French publishers for not meeting its commitments. released in June 2022.

ADLC believes that Google used the content of newsrooms to train the Bard chatbot, now renamed Gemini, without notifying partners.

In the previous agreement, Google pledged to “negotiate in good faith based on transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria”. However, ADLC found that Google does not provide an “opt out” option for publishers when negotiating licensing fees.

Sulina Connal, in charge of Google’s News and Publishing Partnerships, announced on a blog on March 20 that the company accepted the fine but this level was “too heavy” compared to the violations recorded by ADLC.

Connal claims Google is the first and only platform to have signed significant licensing agreements covering related rights with 280 French press publishers. They paid tens of millions of euros each year for more than 450 publications. However, the ADLC fine demonstrated an imbalance in the value the company received from news content.

According to the Guardian , France has struggled for many years to protect the rights of publishers and newspaper revenues against technology platforms. Google and other companies are accused of making billions of dollars from news without sharing revenue with newsrooms. To solve the problem, the European Union (EU) has developed a new copyright law, allowing media to claim compensation when content is used. France is an early test country of this law. After initial opposition, Google and Facebook both agreed to pay several French media companies.

Business Insider assessed that while the controversy between technology companies and publishers has not come to an end, the explosion of chatbots continues to deepen the copyright issue. In 2022, British regulators fined AI company Clearview about $9 million for collecting biometric data for facial recognition. The penalty was revoked a year later. Late last year, the New York Times also sued OpenAI, accusing the company of violating the law by using their content to train ChatGPT. To date, the lawsuit has not yet had a final verdict. Meanwhile, some publishers like Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider, have reached agreements with companies like OpenAI over copyright.

Khuong Nha