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 Boomi burnishes API management capabilities The launch version of the framework comes with four agents — Boomi Answers, Boomi DesignGen, Boomi DataDetective, and Boomi Scribe. By John Leyden May 10, 2024 4 mins APIs PaaS feature TIAA modernizes the customer journey with AI The financial services organization overhauled its customer service operations, weaving together machine learning models, generative AI, and customer journey mapping to improve customer experience and predict trouble points. By Paula Rooney May 10, 2024 6 mins CIO 100 Digital Transformation Artificial Intelligence feature 10 IT skills where expertise pays the most Data from Dice sheds light on 10 enterprise mainstay skills where IT pros who have honed their craft to expert level can earn five-figure salary premiums. By Sarah K. White May 10, 2024 8 mins Salaries IT Jobs IT Skills feature What is ERP? Enterprise resource planning systems explained Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems standardize, streamline, and integrate processes across a wide range of business functions. Here’s what to know about these critical IT systems. By CIO staff and bart_perkins May 10, 2024 12 mins ERP Systems Enterprise Applications 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