When AI platforms ingest, retrieve and reuse news articles to produce results for queries, they may be violating copyright, said Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) in Luxembourg. But under some circumstances, it doesn’t.
The chain of events which led to that conclusion began in a Hungarian court, where a publisher argued that Google’s Gemini AI platform used its content between June 2023 and May 2024. That court escalated four questions about the case to the CJEU.
Two of those questions concerned whether the use of press publications to train an LLM falls under the exclusive right of reproduction granted to the publisher, or whether that use is freely permitted under the text and data mining exception provided by Article 4(3) of the CDSM Directive (EU) 2019/790), formally known as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, the EU law implemented in 2019.
The remaining two concerned whether the answers provided by the chatbot to its users may fall under the reproduction right and/or the right of making available to the public granted to the publisher.
The Kluwer Copyright Blog provides an extensive independent analysis.
Facts behind the case
According to the CJEU, “The Alphabet Group, of which Google Ireland Ltd. (‘Google’) is a member, provides a service known as Google Gemini. Google Gemini is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot (‘AI chatbot’) designed to converse with users through text or speech. It derives that capacity from Large Language Models (‘LLMs’). These are complex neural networks capable of ‘understanding’ and generating natural language, which have been ‘trained’ to do so through the automated processing of very large bodies of text.
“The Gemini LLMs use a technology called ‘Retrieval-Augmented Generation’ (RAG or ‘grounding’), allowing them to collect information in real-time from the World Wide Web in order to improve the accuracy and reliability of the chatbot’s answers. Thanks to that technology, such a chatbot may be used to obtain information about the news. To provide answers in that regard, the chatbot often retrieves (or ‘scrapes’) press articles available online.”
Reporting by Euronext Markets quoted a Google spokesperson, saying that: “Gemini learns linguistic patterns to create original outputs rather than replicating content, supported by extensive publisher controls that give rightsholders clear choice and the ability to opt out.”
CJEU’s position
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said that “When an LLM (large language model)-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher’s website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher’s right may be infringed in certain circumstances,”
Gemini’s answers fall under the publishers’ right of reproduction when chatbots access publications by unlawfully circumventing paywalls or other technical barriers, or when they reuse “the form of expression of that publication in a recognisable manner”, he said.
The outcome, for now
Advocate General Szpunar opined that “there is no evidence that Like Company’s articles have been used to train the Gemini LLMs, since the training of an LLM is not a form of ‘online use’ of press publications themselves, and the related right to train an LLM is freely permitted under the text and data mining exception.
Instead, Szpunar advised the court to focus on the answers provided by the chatbot with two factors in mind: “First, whether that chatbot accessed the press publication at issue unlawfully, in particular by circumventing effective technical measures (such as a paywall) designed to restrict access to, or web-scraping of, that publication; and, secondly, whether the answer provided to the user merely reports facts contained in the original publication or, on the contrary, reuses the form of expression of that publication in a recognisable manner, to such an extent that the user, by reading that answer, is entirely dispensed from accessing the original publication.”
With that, the CJEU referred the case back to the Hungarian court.
Broader concerns
In April 2026, the European Parliament published a thoroughly researched briefing expressing concerns about the use of published materials by AI platforms; specifically by Google, saying that “Google AI Overviews are changing how citizens access public-interest information online. Users increasingly receive synthesised answers within Google’s own interface without visiting publisher websites.”
This in turn led to a conclusion that “AI-generated summaries reduce visits to publishers’ websites. Behavioural research documents a sharp drop in click- through rates whenever an AI Overview appears, a pattern that industry studies consistently corroborate. Media leaders also expect a substantial further decline in search referral traffic.”
Further reading
Opinion summary: Opinion of the Advocate General at the Court, Maciej Szpunar, in Case C-250/25 | Like Company. Press release No. 155/26. Novemer 3, 2026. Court of Justice of the European Union
Full text: Opinion of Advocate General Szpunar delivered on 3 November 2026. Case C-250/25. Like Company v Google Ireland Limited. November 3, 2026. Court of Justice of the European Union
Setback for Google as EU court adviser warns AI chatbot may breach copyright rules. Article. November 3, 2026. by Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee. Euronext Markets
First reflections on AG Szpunar’s opinion in Like Company. Article. November 3, 2026. by Joao Pedro Quintais, Institute for Information Law. Kluwer Copyright Blog
The Impact of Google AI Summaries and Google AI Overviews on Publishers’ Revenue and Media Freedom. Briefing. April 2026. by Professor Nicola Lucchi. Policy Department for Justice, Civil Liberties and Institutional Affairs Directorate-General for Citizens’ Rights, Justice and Institutional Affairs. European Parliament
Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/E. Landing page. Accessed November 4, 2026. EUR-Lex, European Union
