Sacre Bleu Google is facing a $270 million fine, The New York Times reports, after French officials found the tech giant guilty of vacuuming up articles from media companies in order to train its flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, Gemini — without notifying these publishers or the French government, among other violations. The fine is part of an ongoing, years-long dispute between France and Google — and by extension, the European Union — on how tech companies create a monopoly on many services and goods. This recent ruling and fine came from France’s Autorité de la concurrence, the country’s anti-trust government agency, which has been pushing Google to comply with its rulings since it first tangled with the tech company in 2020. That year, the Autorité told Google “to conduct negotiations in good faith with publishers and news agencies on the remuneration for the re-use of their protected contents.” In the next year, the Autorité fined Google more than $500 million for not complying, which prompted the company to pinky swear that it would finally obey France and also have an outside monitor oversee its work to make sure it complied. In other words, this latest ruling — and its eye-watering quarter-billion dollar fine — isn’t a good look for Google. Bad Faith The agency again found that Google didn’t “negotiate in good faith” with media companies on fair compensation, nor did the company provide meaningful data to media companies so they could assess what they are owed from Google for using…Google Hit With Huge Fine for Training AI With News Articles Without Getting Permission