Advocate General Maciej Szpunar's non-binding opinion separates AI training from what chatbots do when they answer questions
Google’s AI chatbot Gemini may, under certain conditions, infringe the rights of press publishers under EU copyright law. That is the view of Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, an adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The opinion, delivered on November 3, 2026, is non-binding. Still, it is the first time a CJEU reference has squarely tackled AI outputs and press publisher rights.
What the adviser actually said
The case, numbered C-250/25, pits Hungarian press publisher Like Company against Google Ireland Ltd. Like Company alleges that Gemini reproduced and communicated substantial parts of its protected press articles without permission.
The alleged conduct spans June 2023 to February 2024.
Szpunar’s core point concerns what happens when a chatbot goes looking for an answer. He laid out the scenario directly:
“When an LLM-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher’s website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher’s right may be infringed in certain circumstances.”
He also drew a clear line around what copyright protects. The underlying facts in a news story are not covered, according to Szpunar. Only the particular way a publication expresses those facts is protected.
Training versus answering
The most consequential part of the opinion may be the distinction it draws between two stages of an AI system’s life.
The first is training, when a large language model ingests huge volumes of text to learn patterns. Szpunar’s opinion treats that use of copyrighted material as covered by the EU’s text-and-data-mining exception, often shortened to TDM.
The second is inference, the moment the model generates a response for a user. This is where the opinion locates the sensitive issues. If the output reproduces protected expression from a publisher’s work, the publisher’s rights can be violated.
The relevant legal provision is Article 15 of the EU’s Digital Single Market Directive. That article gives press publishers their own rights over online uses of their publications.
How the case got here
The dispute was referred to the CJEU in April 2025. An oral hearing took place on March 10, 2026. Szpunar’s opinion arrived about eight months later.
Advocate General opinions are advisory. The court’s judges will issue their own ruling, and they are not obliged to follow the adviser’s reasoning.
What this means for AI companies and publishers
For AI developers, the training-versus-inference split cuts both ways. The reassuring part is that the opinion views training on copyrighted material as falling under the TDM exception.
The less comfortable part is that the risk does not disappear. It moves. Under this reading, the question shifts from what a model learned to what it says when someone asks it something.
The opinion describes exactly that workflow: retrieve a publication, reuse it, deliver a response.
For press publishers, the opinion offers a potential legal footing under Article 15. Like Company’s claim centers on Gemini reproducing substantial parts of its articles, and Szpunar’s analysis suggests that kind of conduct could be actionable in certain circumstances.
As the first case of its kind on AI outputs and publisher rights, whatever the court decides will likely shape how other disputes across the EU are argued.
