Google balks at $270M fine after training AI on French news sites’ content

Enlarge (credit: ALAIN JOCARD / Contributor | AFP)

Google has agreed to pay 250 million euros (about $273 million) to settle a dispute in France after breaching years-old commitments to inform and pay French news publishers when referencing and displaying content in both search results and when training Google's AI-powered chatbot, Gemini.

According to France's competition watchdog, the Autorité de la Concurrence (ADLC), Google dodged many commitments to deal with publishers fairly. Most recently, it never notified publishers or the ADLC before training Gemini (initially launched as Bard) on publishers' content or displaying content in Gemini outputs. Google also waited until September 28, 2023, to introduce easy options for publishers to opt out, which made it impossible for publishers to negotiate fair deals for that content, the ADLC found.

"Until this date, press agencies and publishers wanting to opt out of this use had to insert an instruction opposing any crawling of their content by Google, including on the Search, Discover and Google News services," the ADLC noted, warning that "in the future, the Autorité will be particularly attentive as regards the effectiveness of opt-out systems implemented by Google."