Hatchette and Elsevier Sue Google for Using Their Work to Train AI

Major publishers Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier have filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that Google used their work to train its AI chatbot Gemini. Scott Turow, the author of crime thrillers like Presumed Innocent, has also joined the suit which is seeking class action status. The lawsuit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that Google “reproduced millions of copyrighted works without permission, without providing any compensation to authors or publishers, and with full knowledge that its conduct violated copyright law.” Hachette is the third largest book publisher in the U.S. behind Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, the latter of which signed a licensing deal with Microsoft in 2024 to provide its books to be training AI models, according to Bloomberg. Cengage Learning is a large education publisher that provides access to educational materials like textbooks and Elsevier is an academic publisher of journals like The Lancet and Cell. The plaintiffs allege Google illegally copied their books and journal articles, including from “known pirate sources,” to train its AI models. The result is an AI sy