Major publishers including Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, along with author Scott Turow, have filed a federal lawsuit in New York accusing Google of using copyrighted books and web-scraped material — including content from piracy sites and paywalled sources — to train its Gemini artificial intelligence models without authorisation. The complaint, running to nearly 60 pages, alleges Google was internally warned the practice was "highly problematic" and could expose the company to up to $100 billion in penalties, yet pressed ahead without notifying rights holders. The case is part of a broader wave of copyright litigation targeting AI companies across publishing, news, and music, though outcomes have been mixed — a similar suit against Meta was dismissed earlier this year after a judge ruled its AI training qualified as fair use under US law.