Google receives a French fine of 250 million euros over news articles in Bard – IT Pro – News

Google has been fined €250 million by a French regulator. The company used articles from the French media to train Bard, who now became Gemini, without informing the media. These media cannot simply choose to deny permission.

With Google's actions, the company has violated previous agreements. Autorité de la concurrence says. This concerns agreements concluded in 2022, under which the company indicated, among other things, that it would pay media in France better and more fairly for their content. However, to train the Bard/Gemini chatbot, Google used content from news agencies and publishing houses, without informing the rights holders or the regulator.

Furthermore, rights holders cannot choose to deny permission without having consequences for the way Google treats their content on other Google services. Publishers can only block Bard crawlers by blocking Search, Discovery, and News crawlers. The authority said that rights holders therefore did not have sufficient freedom to obtain appropriate compensation.

In addition to using Bard and Gemini's journalistic content, Google was not sufficiently transparent with rights holders, according to the authority. According to the agreements, Google must share transparent and timely information about, for example, how Google services make money from rights holders' content. These publishers must be able to negotiate fairly with Google about the correct compensation. In addition, an independent body was appointed to monitor the agreements; According to the authority, Google communicated insufficiently and too late with this authority.

Google did not appeal the findings of the regulator's investigation and settled. For this reason, the fine is lower. The company also announced measures to prevent future violations. The French law that Google violated is an application of European copyright directives.