On November 3, 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union received an opinion from First Advocate General Maciej Szpunar that Google’s Gemini chatbot could violate EU law on press copyright. The opinion comes in response to a complaint by Hungarian media company Like Company against Google Ireland over alleged use of its content.
Szpunar warned that a chatbot could infringe publishers' rights when it retrieves an online article and reuses its content to answer a user. He said the risk depends on whether the chatbot had accessed the publication unlawfully, such as by bypassing a paywall, and whether the response reproduces the article’s distinctive expression rather than just reporting facts.
The adviser noted that infringement could occur if a chatbot reproduces an original article’s expression in a recognizable form, making it unnecessary for users to view the original publication. He also said publishers’ rights to make their content available to the public could be infringed when such reproduction is systematic in responses to related user queries.
Szpunar added that chatbot providers could face liability when such practices are part of their business model or when they fail to implement appropriate measures to prevent them. The Budapest Regional Court referred the case to the EU court, seeking clarification on whether using press articles to train AI models and reproducing their content in chatbot responses violated publishers’ rights under EU law.
