Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Google was fined €250 million (US$273 million) by French authorities on Wednesday after being found to have used news articles to train its artificial intelligence without consent.
According to France's competition watchdog, Google breached EU intellectual property rules by using publishers’ and news agencies’ content to train its Bard chatbot without notifying them.
This follows a settlement which appeared to resolve the dispute last year when Google dropped an appeal against an initial €500 million fine.
However, Google was said to have violated four out of seven terms agreed in the settlement, including by failing to negotiate with publishers in good faith and provide transparent information.
As per the watchdog, Google’s Bard was trained on data from unspecified news sources, while companies and regulators were not informed of such moves.
“Subsequently, Google linked the use of the content concerned by its artificial intelligence service to the display of protected content,” the watchdog said, meaning original authors were unable to negotiate fair prices.
Google said it had accepted the settlement since it was “time to move on,” though argued the fine was disproportionate.
“We want to focus on the larger goal of sustainable approaches to connecting people with quality content and on working constructively with French publishers,” the firm said.