🔍 Read the full analysis: What Publishers Should Know About The EU View On AI Chatbots on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
On Nov. 3, 2026, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that chatbot answers using press articles may infringe publishers’ rights if the material was accessed unlawfully or the answer reproduces a recognisable form of the article. He said the test does not appear to be met in Like Company’s dispute with Google, and the court has yet to rule.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the Court of Justice of the European Union on Nov. 3 that chatbots that retrieve and reuse news articles may infringe press publishers’ rights in certain circumstances. In Case C‑250/25, Like Company v Google Ireland, he said the relevant questions are whether the chatbot obtained the article by bypassing an access restriction and whether its answer reproduces the article’s distinctive expression closely enough to substitute for reading the original. The opinion is not binding, and Szpunar said those conditions do not appear to be met in the dispute before the court.
The case began after Hungarian publisher Like Company challenged Google over Gemini’s summary of an online article about a singer’s reported plan to bring dolphins to Lake Balaton. The publisher argued that Google had used its articles to train Gemini and had repeatedly reproduced them in chatbot answers between June 13, 2023, and May 31, 2024, according to the Court of Justice’s summary of the case. A Hungarian court referred four questions to Luxembourg: two concerning training and two concerning chatbot responses.
Szpunar’s proposed test focuses on how a chatbot uses a publication. An answer may fall within the press publishers’ right if the service accessed material unlawfully, such as by getting around a paywall or an anti-scraping measure, or if it reproduces the article’s protected form of expression so recognisably that a user can do without the original. Merely presenting the same facts, he said, is not enough. The Court of Justice described the proceeding as its first generative AI case.
On training, Szpunar recommended that the court find the questions inadmissible because the file did not establish that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. He also reasoned that model training on dedicated computers is not the kind of online use covered by the EU press publishers’ right. Separately, and as an additional point rather than a ruling on the dispute, he said the EU’s text-and-data-mining exception generally covers training, subject to rights holders’ ability to opt out in a machine-readable form.
Infographic 01 · Where the line runs
When a chatbot answer infringes a publisher's right
Advocate General Szpunar's test in Case C‑250/25 for chatbots that retrieve news articles in real time and reuse them in their answers.
Stays free
- Reporting the same facts. Nobody owns the news itself (pts 199–200).
- A short factual summary, presented differently (pt 208).
- An overview built from several sources, restructured, with links back (pts 208, 234).
- Individual words or very short extracts (pt 201).
Can infringe
- Getting around a paywall or anti-scraping block to fetch the article (pt 188).
- An answer that keeps the article’s structure and phrasing, even paraphrased, so readers can skip the original (pts 202, 205, 207).
- Systematically recognisable articles in answers to related questions: making available to the public (pts 213, 240).
The test, step by step
For a chatbot that fetches a news article live (RAG) and answers a user
- Is it an online use by a service in the EU?Yes for RAG answers to EU users, wherever the servers are (pts 165–169).
- Did the bot get in lawfully?No circumvention of effective technical measures (pt 188).
- Is the article’s form of expression recognisable in the answer, to the point of substitution?Side-by-side comparison; facts do not count (pts 196–209).
- Is the provider responsible?If inherent to its business model, or no reasonable measures such as respecting blocks and output filters (pts 221–222).
- Temporary copies during retrieval are then exempt under Art. 5(1) InfoSoc; the TDM exception does not apply to RAG (pts 179–189).
An Advocate General’s opinion, not a judgment. General information, not legal advice.
Sources: Opinion of AG Szpunar, C‑250/25 (provisional text), CURIA press release No 155/26 (3 Nov 2026). Point numbers refer to the provisional text.
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Limits on Chatbot Use of News
The opinion offers publishers and AI services a proposed way to distinguish permissible factual summaries from uses that may infringe the EU right created for press publishers. For publishers, it points to access controls and the degree to which a chatbot answer echoes an article’s expression as relevant to potential claims. For chatbot operators, the reasoning highlights the need to respect restrictions on access and avoid responses that function as substitutes for protected articles.
The proposed standard does not give publishers ownership over the underlying facts or a general veto over chatbot discussion of news. It instead focuses on the route by which a service obtains an article and what it reproduces. That distinction could matter to licensing discussions and the design of AI search products, but the legal position will not be settled until the court issues its judgment.
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From News Aggregators to Gemini
The EU created the press publishers’ right in the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. As Szpunar’s opinion recounts, lawmakers had services such as news aggregators in mind, including Google News, when they adopted the provision. The Like Company case asks whether that right also applies when a chatbot retrieves an online article and uses it to compose a response.
The Hungarian court sent its questions to the Court of Justice after Like Company brought its claim against Google. Nine EU governments and the European Commission submitted written observations, and the hearing took place on March 10, 2026, according to the opinion. The proceedings concern both training and chatbot answers, but Szpunar’s recommendation on training is principally that the court should not decide the questions because the record does not establish that the publisher’s articles were used in training.
The Court Has Yet to Decide
Szpunar’s opinion is an independent legal adviser’s recommendation, not the court’s final judgment. The Court of Justice may follow it, modify its reasoning or take a different position. No date for the judgment has been set, so the timing and precise scope of the final legal standard remain unknown.
The underlying facts also leave open whether Like Company’s content was used in Gemini’s training data; Szpunar said the case file did not support that claim. His assessment that the proposed infringement conditions do not appear to be present in this example is likewise not a final finding by the court. The Hungarian court will ultimately apply the EU court’s interpretation to the dispute.
Awaiting the Luxembourg Judgment
The Court of Justice will now consider the Advocate General’s opinion before issuing its judgment. The court has not announced a date. Its statistics show that preliminary-reference cases took an average of 16.9 months in 2025, but that figure does not establish when this particular case will be decided.
After the EU court answers the referred legal questions, the Hungarian court will continue the national proceedings and decide the dispute in light of that interpretation. Until then, the opinion gives publishers and chatbot providers a proposed framework, not a final ruling on Google’s liability or a definitive answer to every question about AI and copyright.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled that Gemini infringed Like Company’s rights?
No. Advocate General Maciej Szpunar issued a non-binding opinion. He said the conditions for infringement do not appear to be met on the facts described, but the Court of Justice has not issued its judgment.
When could a chatbot answer infringe a publisher’s rights under the opinion?
Szpunar identified two relevant circumstances: a service may have obtained the article by bypassing an access restriction, or its answer may reproduce the article’s distinctive expression so recognisably that users can do without the original. Reporting the same facts alone is not enough under his proposed test.
Did the opinion decide whether Gemini trained on the publisher’s articles?
No. Szpunar recommended that the court treat the training questions as inadmissible because the case file did not establish that Like Company’s articles were used for training. His separate discussion of the text-and-data-mining exception was not a binding decision on that factual claim.
What happens next in the case?
The Court of Justice will issue its judgment after considering the opinion; no date has been announced. The Hungarian court will then apply the EU court’s interpretation to Like Company’s dispute with Google.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
