Google was hit with a roughly $270 million fine on Wednesday, becoming the first tech giant to face a penalty for how it trained its AI.
French regulators say Google went back on its commitment to negotiate deals with news outlets in France for their content. Instead, the watchdog said, Google used the journalists’ content without telling them to teach its AI chatbot Bard — now rebranded as Gemini.
The competition watchdog group says Google broke EU intellectual property rules by using the data. The California-based company was fined €250 million and agreed not to dispute the facts, the French regulators said.
In a statement, Google said the fine was “not proportionate” to the allegations.
Google said it agreed to pay because it was “time to move on.”
In its statement, Google said it was focused on “the larger goal of sustainable approaches to connecting people with quality content and on working constructively with French publishers.”
How tech companies train their chatbots remains a hot topic — and one that’s already been brought up in court.
The New York Times sued OpenAI late last year over its ChatGPT bot, alleging the AI firm broke the law by using its content to teach the large language model. OpenAI has asked a judge to dismiss at least parts of the suit, claiming that the Times hired someone to “hack” its platforms.
Meanwhile, some publishers (including Axel Springer, Business Insider’s parent company) have reached deals with companies like ChatGPT to use their content.
