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 feature IT leaders’ AI talent needs hinge on reskilling Most organizations see the need to revamp their training programs to address AI skills shortages — an approach that delivers intangibles hiring can’t provide. By Grant Gross May 31, 2024 7 mins Hiring Generative AI IT Skills feature Skills the Irish Government CIO uses to advance digital transformation In his eight-year tenure as CIO at Ireland’s Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Barry Lowry always had a vision of what digital government could look like. Here, he details how an approach built on transparency and innovation is conti By Ian Campbell May 31, 2024 8 mins CIO Government IT Cloud Management brandpost Sponsored by Cisco 3 reasons you should adopt cloud monitoring Cloud network management offers increased security, operational efficiencies, and more. By D Matthew Landry May 30, 2024 4 mins Machine Learning opinion Faultless with serverless: Cloud best practices for optimized returns What does a well-defined serverless approach look like? Let's learn some of the best modern approaches to handling Enterprises and SMEs growing serverless computing needs. By Yash Mehta May 30, 2024 5 mins Serverless Computing 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