EU court adviser says Google’s Gemini chatbot may infringe publisher copyright

Advocate General Maciej Szpunar's non-binding opinion separates AI training from what chatbots do when they answer questions Google’s AI chatbot Gemini may, under certain conditions, infringe the rights of press publishers under EU copyright law. That is the view of Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, an adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The opinion, delivered on November 3, 2026, is non-binding. Still, it is the first time a CJEU reference has squarely tackled AI outputs and press publisher rights. What the adviser actually said The case, numbered C-250/25, pits Hungarian press publisher Like Company against Google Ireland Ltd. Like Company alleges that Gemini reproduced and communicated substantial parts of its protected press articles without permission. The alleged conduct spans June 2023 to February 2024. Szpunar’s core point concerns what happens when a chatbot goes looking for an answer. He laid out the scenario directly: “When an LLM-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 circumstance...