Google received a hefty fine of approximately $270 million on Wednesday, partly due to its methods of training its artificial intelligence. The French regulators imposed a €250 million penalty on the tech giant. According to the watchdog, Google violated its commitment by utilizing news outlets' content without their knowledge to train its AI system, previously known as Bard and now rebranded as Gemini. In a previous settlement, Google had pledged to negotiate fair deals with news outlets based on transparent, objective, and non-discriminatory criteria, referred to as "Commitment 1" by the regulators. The regulators also accused Google of failing to cooperate with a monitoring trustee, lacking good faith negotiations, and providing incomplete revenue information during the negotiation process. Google did not contest the facts surrounding the violations and was fined €250 million by the French regulators. In response, Google stated that the fine was disproportionate and agreed to pay it to move forward. The company emphasized its focus on finding sustainable ways to connect users with quality content and collaborate constructively with French publishers. The issue of how tech companies train their chatbots has become a contentious topic, with previous legal cases highlighting the matter. In 2022, AI company Clearview was fined around $9 million by a UK regulator for the unauthorized collection of biometric data. However, the fine was later overturned on appeal. Last year, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging unauthorized use of its content to train its large language model, ChatGPT.

OpenAI has sought to have parts of the suit dismissed, claiming the Times engaged in hacking, an allegation the newspaper denies. Some publishers, including Axel Springer (Business Insider's parent company), have entered agreements with companies like ChatGPT to utilize their content. Correction: This article previously mentioned that it was the first time a company had been fined for AI training violations. However, in 2022, Clearview was fined for scraping biometric data in the UK, and that fine was later overturned on appeal.