🔍 Read the full analysis: How To Understand The EU Debate Over AI, Facts And Publishers’ Writing on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that AI chatbots may infringe press publishers’ rights if they access articles unlawfully or reproduce their distinctive expression closely enough to replace the original. He said the test does not appear to be met in Like Company’s dispute with Google, and his opinion is not binding; the court has yet to rule.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the European Union’s top court that a chatbot may infringe press publishers’ rights when it retrieves and reuses news articles, but only under particular conditions. In a dispute over Google’s Gemini summarising a Hungarian article about dolphins, Szpunar said those conditions do not appear to be met; the opinion is advisory, and the Court of Justice has not issued its judgment.
The opinion, issued on November 3 in Case C‑250/25, concerns EU law giving publishers rights over certain online uses of their press publications. Szpunar said a chatbot’s answer may cross the line if the service obtained the article unlawfully—for example, by bypassing a paywall or anti-scraping measure—or if it reproduces the article’s distinctive expression so recognisably that a user can avoid visiting the original.
By contrast, repeating the same facts is not enough, according to the opinion. Szpunar’s proposed distinction is between unprotected information and the protected way an article expresses it. He said the example answer did not appear to contain recognisable wording from the article, and that there were no access barriers in the circumstances described. He also referred to safeguards Google appeared to have in place.
Like Company, which operates Hungarian news websites, sued Google in Hungary. According to the Court of Justice’s press release, the publisher alleges that Google used its articles to train Gemini and repeatedly reproduced and made them available through the chatbot between June 13, 2023, and May 31, 2024. The Hungarian court referred four questions to Luxembourg. Szpunar advised that the two questions about training were inadmissible because the referral did not establish that the articles were used to train the model.
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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When Chatbot Answers May Replace Articles
The opinion could shape how publishers and AI services assess the use of online reporting in chatbot answers. If the court adopts Szpunar’s approach, services may need to pay particular attention to whether they access content despite technical or legal restrictions and whether their answers reproduce a publication’s distinctive wording or structure closely enough to substitute for it.
For publishers, the proposed test offers a possible route to challenge some forms of reuse, but it does not give them exclusive control over the underlying facts. For users, the distinction could affect whether assistants provide short factual summaries, quote or closely track an article, or direct people to original reporting. These are potential implications of the adviser’s analysis, not settled legal outcomes.
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A Publishers’ Right Tested by Gemini
The case involves the EU press publishers’ right established by the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. As Szpunar recounts, the right was designed in part to let publishers control and license online use of extracts by services such as news aggregators. The court is now being asked how that right applies when a chatbot retrieves an article and uses it to formulate an answer.
The example began with a report published in Hungary in July 2023 about a singer’s alleged plan to bring dolphins to Lake Balaton. A user asked Gemini to summarise the article in Hungarian. The dispute reached the EU court after the Hungarian proceedings generated questions about both AI training and chatbot responses. The hearing in Luxembourg took place on March 10, 2026; nine EU governments and the European Commission submitted written observations, according to the opinion.
On training, Szpunar’s central point was that the referral did not show that this article had been included in Gemini’s training material. He noted that the article appeared in July 2023 and Gemini 1.0 was released in December that year, and considered training use implausible on the facts presented. He instead described the answer as likely based on live retrieval—often called retrieval-augmented generation—in which a system searches for relevant pages and uses them to compose a response.
He also addressed the law on training as a supplementary point, rather than as a ruling needed to resolve the case. He said text-and-data-mining rules may generally cover such training, subject to rights holders’ ability to opt out in a machine-readable form. That discussion should not be confused with his procedural recommendation that the court reject the training questions in this particular referral.
“The court described the case as “the first generative AI case to reach the Court of Justice.””
— The Court of Justice of the European Union, press release No. 155/26
The Court Has Not Ruled Yet
Szpunar’s opinion is not binding. The Court of Justice may follow it, modify its reasoning or reach a different conclusion. The final interpretation of EU law—and how it applies to the facts found in Hungary—will come from the court’s judgment, for which no date has been announced.
The record described in the opinion also limits what can be concluded about AI training in this dispute. Szpunar said there was no evidence before the referring court that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. His supplementary discussion of text-and-data-mining rules is not a finding that Google did train on those articles, nor a final court ruling on the scope of the exception.
It remains to be seen how courts would apply the proposed test to different kinds of chatbot answers, including answers that quote portions of reporting, combine multiple sources or summarise an article in its own words. The opinion sets out a legal approach; it does not resolve every factual question about how AI services retrieve, store or present publishers’ material.
Awaiting the Luxembourg Judgment
The Court of Justice will now consider the questions sent by the Hungarian court and issue its judgment. That ruling will provide the binding interpretation of the EU law at issue; the Hungarian court will then apply the EU court’s answer to the national dispute. No judgment date has been set.
Until then, the opinion offers guidance but does not settle Google’s liability or establish a final rule for all AI services. Publishers, chatbot operators and users will be watching whether the court adopts Szpunar’s distinction between freely reportable facts and recognisable protected expression, as well as how it treats access restrictions and AI training.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled against Google?
No. Szpunar issued a nonbinding opinion on November 3, 2026. The court has not yet delivered its judgment, and no date has been announced.
When could a chatbot’s use of an article infringe publishers’ rights?
Under the adviser’s proposed test, infringement may arise if a chatbot accesses an article unlawfully, such as by bypassing an access barrier, or reproduces its distinctive expression so closely that users can avoid the original publication. Reporting the same facts alone would not meet that test.
Did Szpunar find that Gemini trained on Like Company’s articles?
No. He said the referral did not establish that the articles were used for training and advised that the training questions were inadmissible. His separate discussion of text-and-data-mining rules was supplementary, not a finding about Google’s actual training data.
What happens after the opinion?
The Court of Justice will issue a binding judgment answering the questions referred by the Hungarian court. The Hungarian court will then apply that interpretation to the dispute between Like Company and Google.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
