Google trained its Bard AI on copyright news articles without giving publishers sufficient information about remuneration or an opportunity to opt out, France’s competition authority found. Credit: Shutterstock France’s competition authority fined Google, its parent company Alphabet, and two subsidiaries a total of €250 million ($271 million) for breaching a previous agreement on using copyrighted content for training its Bard AI service, now known as Gemini. The Autorité de la concurrence said Wednesday that the search giant failed to comply with a June 2022 settlement over the use of news stories in its search results, News and Discover pages. Google avoided a fine at that point by pledging to enter into good-faith negotiations over compensation with news providers for their content, among other steps. Specifically, according to the authority, Google agreed to provide news agencies and publishers with a “transparent assessment” of their remuneration for usage rights, and to make certain that the negotiations didn’t impinge on “other economic relations” between Google and the publishers. However, Google has failed to maintain those commitments in several ways, the authority said. First, it has not been sufficiently forthcoming in its information sharing with its representatives, failing to provide information necessary for the monitoring of the agreement in a timely way. Second, the company has failed to provide full details about how it makes money from news content, which also violates its 2022 commitments. Finally, the authority accused Google of using news content to train its Bard AI service (now called Gemini), without the permission of the publishers, and without providing access to an opt-out tool that would have let them contest the AI usage. “The Autorité considers the fact that Google did not inform editors and press agencies of the use of their content by its service Bard to be a breach of its obligation of transparency,” the authority’s statement said. Google didn’t get around to providing a tool for publishers to opt out of having their material used to train Bard until September 2023, when it launched Google Extended. Until then, the authority said, publishers’ only option was to block all Google services from crawling their sites, including those indexing it for its search, Discover, and News services. In response to the authority’s ruling, Google issued an official blog post saying it found the fine “disproportionate,” but that it would pay up rather than contest it, saying “it is time to turn the page.” In an earlier ruling in this same case, in July 2021 the authority fined Google €500 million for practices likely to cause harm to the press sector. Related content news SAP, IBM Consulting partner to offer genAI-based services The partnership will see both companies offer generative AI-based services to enterprises via RISE with SAP offering. By Anirban Ghoshal May 09, 2024 3 mins Generative AI IBM SAP feature Essential skills and traits of chief AI officers CAIOs require a multidimensional skill set to drive innovation, establish and lead an AI-ready culture, and create tangible organizational results leveraging a complex and rapidly evolving technology. By David Weldon May 09, 2024 9 mins Artificial Intelligence IT Leadership interview Strong CIO-CISO relations fuel success at Ally CIO Sathish Muthukrishnan and CISO Donna Hart have forged a partnership steeped in Ally’s culture of radical candor that keeps the financial services firm secure and innovative. By Dan Roberts May 09, 2024 12 mins CIO CSO and CISO IT Leadership case study How being cloud smart fosters growth at Saab Fuelled by global turbulence and increasing defense budgets, Swedish defense group Saab is meeting high demand by integrating efforts to become more software-driven, and central to managing it all is CIO Annette Eriksson. By Karin Lindström May 09, 2024 5 mins CIO Aerospace and Defense Industry Cloud Architecture PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe