Google, the tech giant, has faced a significant fine of $271 million imposed by France’s competition watchdog due to breaches connected to EU intellectual property regulations. The breach concerns Google’s relationship with various media publishers and its AI service, leading to this substantial fine.
On a Wednesday, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was slapped with a 271.7 million dollar fine by France’s competition watchdog due to violations linked to the EU’s intellectual property rules. The violation was reported in Google’s relationship with media publishers and their concerns regarding Google’s AI service.
The watchdog accused Google of training its AI-powered chatbot Bard, which has now been rebranded as Gemini, on content from publishers and news agencies without their knowledge.
“Google’s AI-powered chatbot Bard was trained on content from publishers and news agencies, without notifying them” – French Competition Watchdog
Google has agreed not to challenge the facts as part of the settlement proceedings. The company also outlined a series of remedial measures to address certain shortcomings. Google accepted the settlement, stating that “it is time to move on,” adding that they want to focus on sustainable approaches to connecting people with quality content and work constructively with French publishers.
The fine is associated with a copyright dispute in France over online content, which was initiated by complaints from some of the country’s largest news organizations, including Agence France Presse (AFP). The dispute seemed to have been resolved in 2022 when Google withdrew its appeal against an initial 500 million euro fine imposed at the end of a major investigation conducted by the Autorite de la Concurrence.
However, the watchdog stated that Google had violated the terms of four out of seven commitments agreed upon in the settlement. This included conducting negotiations with publishers in good faith and providing transparent information.
The watchdog specifically cited Google’s AI chatbot Bard, launched in 2023. It claimed that the chatbot was trained on data from unspecified media outlets and news agencies without informing them or the regulator.
The fine comes at a time when many publishers, writers, and newsrooms are trying to limit the scraping, which is the automatic collection of data, by AI services of their online content without their consent or fair compensation.
In 2023, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against Google rivals Microsoft and OpenAI, the creator of the popular artificial-intelligence platform ChatGPT. They were accused of using millions of the newspaper’s articles without permission to train chatbots.
Google called the massive fine disproportionate and stated that the watchdog had not sufficiently considered its efforts in an environment where it is challenging to set a course because one cannot predict the future.
“We — and others — need more clarity on whom we are paying for what,” Google stated.
