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TL;DR
On November 3, 2026, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that chatbots using online news articles may infringe press publishers’ rights in specific circumstances, including unlawful access or answers that reproduce recognisable expression. He said those conditions did not appear to apply to the Gemini summary at issue, and his opinion is not a final ruling.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the European Union’s Court of Justice on November 3 that a chatbot using online news articles in its answers may infringe press publishers’ rights if it accesses material unlawfully or reproduces its recognisable expression. The opinion in Case C‑250/25, Like Company v Google Ireland is not binding, and Szpunar said the conditions for infringement did not appear to be met in the dispute over a Gemini summary of a Hungarian article.
The case began after Gemini summarised a 2023 Hungarian news article about a proposal to bring dolphins to a pool on the Tihany peninsula. Like Company, which operates Hungarian news portals, sued Google, alleging that Google had used its articles to train Gemini and had reproduced and made them available through the chatbot between June 13, 2023, and May 31, 2024. Those are the publisher’s claims, not findings by the Court of Justice.
The Hungarian court referred four questions to Luxembourg: two about AI training and two about chatbot answers. Szpunar said the training questions should be dismissed as inadmissible because the record did not establish that the articles were used to train Gemini. He said the specific article was more plausibly retrieved live when the user asked for a summary, rather than drawn from model training data. He also considered training separately, saying it is generally covered by the EU’s text-and-data-mining exception, subject to rights holders’ ability to reserve their rights in a machine-readable form.
For chatbot answers, the adviser’s proposed test focuses on how the system obtained and used the article. A breach may arise if a chatbot bypasses a paywall or an anti-scraping barrier, or if its answer repeats the article’s expression closely enough that a user can do without the original. Repeating the same facts, without recognisable wording or form, would not by itself meet that test. Szpunar said the example appeared to involve no access barrier or recognisable wording, and noted that Google appeared to have safeguards.
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 News Reuse
The opinion sketches a possible boundary for AI search and answer products that retrieve news from websites. If the Court adopts Szpunar’s approach, services may need to respect technical and legal access restrictions and avoid answers that function as close substitutes for publishers’ articles. That could affect how chatbots fetch, summarise and link to reporting, as well as how companies negotiate content licences.
For publishers, the proposed standard offers a possible route to challenge some uses, but it does not give them ownership of facts or a general right to stop AI systems from describing news events. For users, the practical effect could include more source links or summaries drawing on multiple publications, although the opinion does not require any particular product design. These are potential consequences, not rules already in force: the final legal test remains for the court to decide.
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From News Aggregators to Gemini
The dispute concerns the EU’s press publishers’ right, established under Article 15 of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. The opinion describes that right as originally aimed at online services using extracts from publications, including news aggregators such as Google News. The case asks how that framework applies when a chatbot provides an answer based on material it retrieves from the web.
At the March 10, 2026, hearing, nine EU governments and the European Commission submitted written observations, according to the source account. The case reaches the Court through a preliminary reference from a Hungarian court: the EU court provides guidance on EU law, while the national court applies that guidance to the dispute. The Court of Justice described it as the first generative AI case to reach it, according to its press release.
“May, in certain circumstances, infringe the rights of press publishers.”
— The Court of Justice of the European Union, press release No 155/26
The Final Legal Test Is Pending
Szpunar’s opinion is advisory, not a judgment. The Court of Justice may follow it, modify its reasoning or take a different approach. No date for the court’s ruling has been announced, and the Budapest court will still need to decide the underlying dispute after receiving the EU court’s guidance.
The record described in the opinion also does not establish that Like Company’s articles were included in Gemini’s training data. The adviser’s discussion of the text-and-data-mining exception was not a ruling on that allegation. It remains unclear how the final judgment will treat different retrieval methods, access controls and answer formats, or how the principles would apply across other chatbot services and publishers.
Court Guidance Before Local Judgment
The next major step is the Court of Justice’s judgment in Case C‑250/25; the court has not announced when it will issue it. Afterward, the Hungarian court will consider the dispute in light of the EU court’s interpretation and determine how the facts and claims apply. Until then, the adviser’s proposed limits offer guidance on the questions at stake but do not settle them.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled on chatbot use of news?
No. Advocate General Szpunar issued a nonbinding opinion on November 3, 2026. The Court of Justice has not yet delivered its judgment.
When might a chatbot answer infringe publishers’ rights under the opinion?
Szpunar said infringement may arise if a service gets around an access barrier or reproduces recognisable expression so extensively that users can do without the original publication. Repeating facts alone would not be enough under his proposed test.
Did the opinion find that Gemini was trained on the publisher’s articles?
No. The adviser said the record did not establish that the articles were used for training and recommended dismissing the training questions as inadmissible. He considered training separately, but that discussion was not a finding about Gemini’s data.
What happens to the Hungarian lawsuit?
The Court of Justice is expected to provide EU-law guidance, after which the Hungarian court will decide the national dispute. No date for the EU court’s judgment has been set.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
