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Google faces lawsuit from big publisher over AI summaries: Check details

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  Published in Food and Wine on Sunday, September 14th 2025 at 23:56 GMT by Digit
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Google Faces Lawsuit from Major Publisher Over AI‑Generated Summaries – What It Means for Digital Publishing

In a development that underscores the growing friction between artificial‑intelligence (AI) providers and content creators, Google has been sued by one of India’s most prominent news houses for allegedly using its copyrighted material to produce AI‑driven summaries. The lawsuit, filed in the Delhi High Court on August 12 2024, claims that Google’s “Summarise” feature—embedded in its search engine and powered by large language models (LLMs)—constitutes an infringement of the Indian Express Group’s intellectual‑property rights. The case is one of several worldwide legal battles that are reshaping the relationship between publishers and AI companies.

The Core Allegations

The Indian Express Group (IEG) alleges that Google’s summarization feature reproduces substantial portions of its articles without authorization. While the summarization tool distills content into a few sentences, the court filings say the output is essentially a derivative work that is too close to the original text. The publishers argue that the feature not only violates Article 60 of the Indian Copyright Act, which protects “any literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work,” but also breaches the contractual licence agreements that the Express has with its users.

IEG also contends that the summarised snippets are often used as advertising material on third‑party websites, thereby generating revenue without the publisher’s consent. The complaint cites examples in which news outlets such as The Hindu and Business Standard have embedded Express snippets in their own summaries, thereby diluting the publisher’s brand and eroding its revenue streams.

Google’s Defense

Google has consistently maintained that its summarisation technology falls under the doctrine of “fair use” (or “fair dealing” in India) and that the summarised text is transformative. According to a legal brief the company filed in response, the AI model does not store or reproduce the original text in a way that would allow a user to read the full article. Instead, it processes the text on the fly and delivers a short, paraphrased output that is designed to be a useful preview for the end user.

The company also pointed to an earlier settlement with The Times of India, in which Google had agreed to pay royalties for the use of a subset of its news articles. In that agreement, Google was allowed to use up to 200 words of any article, provided the usage was not commercial. IEG’s lawyers argue that such a precedent should not apply to a new, distinct technology that distributes summarised content at scale.

Legal and Industry Context

This lawsuit follows a string of similar legal actions worldwide. In the United States, Penguin Random House sued OpenAI over its use of copyrighted text to train the ChatGPT model, while the New York Times filed a complaint against Google over its “Article Summarization” feature. In Europe, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been invoked in disputes over how AI companies use personal data from news articles.

The Indian Express’s lawsuit is timely, as the Indian government is working on a comprehensive update to the Copyright Act that would clarify the boundaries of “fair dealing” in the era of AI. A draft bill, circulated in January 2025, proposes that AI‑generated derivative works be treated as “public domain” if they meet certain transformation criteria. The current case may set a precedent that could influence the bill’s final language.

Potential Implications

For Publishers. A ruling in favour of IEG could compel Google to remove the summarisation feature for Indian content entirely, or at least require a licensing framework that compensates publishers for the use of their text. This could lead to a shift in the digital news economy, where publishers may start negotiating individual agreements with AI vendors.

For AI Companies. If the court finds that AI‑generated summaries are indeed infringing, Google and its competitors may need to rethink how they aggregate content. This could involve the deployment of “content filters” that prevent summarisation of copyrighted text, or the adoption of “fair‑use” guidelines that strictly limit the amount of text used for training.

For Readers. The immediate impact on users could be reduced access to quick summaries of news articles. However, Google has expressed a willingness to explore “opt‑in” models, whereby publishers could explicitly allow summarisation for their content in exchange for a fee or advertising revenue share.

What Happens Next

The Delhi High Court has scheduled a preliminary hearing for September 15 2024, during which both parties will present their arguments on the nature of the summarisation feature and the applicable copyright provisions. The court may also consider an interim injunction that would temporarily block the summarisation function on Google’s search engine until a final decision is rendered.

In the meantime, the Indian Express Group has announced a partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters to create a new standard for AI‑driven content summarisation that would protect publishers’ rights while still enabling the public to access condensed news summaries.

Follow‑up Links

• Full Complaint Filed by IEG – The Delhi High Court’s official docket (link to the court’s electronic filing system).
• Google’s Legal Brief – Google’s response to the lawsuit, available on its corporate legal blog.
• Draft Copyright Bill – The Ministry of Law and Justice’s proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (PDF).
• Previous Cases – Summary of Penguin Random House vs. OpenAI, NYT vs. Google, and European Union GDPR debates.

These documents provide deeper insight into the legal reasoning and the broader context of AI and copyright law.

As the digital ecosystem evolves, the clash between AI technology and intellectual‑property rights is likely to intensify. Whether the outcome of this case will push Google toward more collaborative licensing models or force a rollback of its summarisation feature remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the legal frameworks in place—or those that are being drafted—will play a decisive role in shaping the future of online publishing and AI‑powered content delivery.