WASHINGTON (CN) — In a Monday night filing, the Justice Department argued a federal judge should require Google to turn over documents related to artificial intelligence as part of a major internet search antitrust trial.
The DOJ asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to weigh in and decide whether more information on the new technology, known as Gemini, should be turned over as the parties propose potential remedies for the tech giant’s monopoly in internet search.
“Generative AI is changing how users interact with and access search,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing. “As the court is aware, by the time the court hears evidence related to remedies, it will have been almost three years since liability discovery closed. During this time, the features and services associates with Google’s search product have continued to evolve, even as harm related to Google’s conduct continues.”
The Justice Department opened the filing, noting that discovery in the case, which was originally brought in 2020, ended in 2022 and thus could not reflect how “notable” artificial intelligence had become in search.
The feds agreed with the Barack Obama appointee that artificial intelligence could not “replace the fundamental building blocks of search,” but warned that the new product could allow Google to “leverage its search dominance to maintain the status quo.”
Pointing to witness testimony in the case’s nine-week trial, the government expressed concern that the new technology could change the “search ecosystem,” and affect basic functions like crawling, indexing, results and advertising.
The government cited a Sept. 20 speech by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in which he said artificial intelligence helped the company “keep search above everyone else” and was integral to its search and search text advertisement products.
Due to these new developments, the Justice Department argued it was essential that Mehta order additional information on artificial intelligence to be turned over in the case.
The request comes less than two weeks after the Justice Department proposed a major break up of Google as its recommended remedy in an eventual remedy trial following Mehta’s August ruling that Google operated an illegal monopoly over internet search.
The Aug. 5 ruling came three months after closing arguments wrapped up in May — which also followed a seven-month delay after Google rested its case last November.
Google made its generative artificial intelligence in search product publicly available on May 14. Since then, the function has been heavily criticized, both for issues with regurgitated false information scrawled from a third-party website and for its heavy energy usage.
The company argued that a request for documents related to its artificial intelligence efforts was too expansive, as Google uses the technology for a wide range of activities, pointing to Google researchers winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry earlier this month to predict the shape of proteins and invent new ones.
Additionally, the company said it was using artificial intelligence in Google Maps, translating on its Pixel smartphone devices, Gmail, Google photos and more. The Justice Department could not justify a request for all such artificial intelligence-connected documents then, Google said.
For requests touching on artificial intelligence in Google Chrome, Android or other “core” Google applications, the company argued they breached discovery rules because the feds failed to raise the issue in its remedy proposal.
Google broadly pushed back against the Justice Department’s demands for documents, instead urging Mehta allow the tech giant to only fulfill 24 specific requests.
Besides three requests, which the company viewed as improperly retreaded ground already covered in the case, Google said it would provide emails, regulatory submissions, executed contracts or documents, despite having to find them through hyper-specific searches.
Google added that it would provide substantial amounts of documents for each request, noting that it had turned over 130 agreements in response to one on Monday.
The Justice Department said that Google’s position was untenable, arguing that artificial intelligence could be an “important catalyst” in the search market and warranted more information.
Monday night’s filing comes as the case marches toward an eventual remedy trial, in which the DOJ has suggested a break up of the tech giant and to slice off key parts of its business, like its Google Chrome browser and the exclusive search agreements that make Google the default search engine on iPhones.
The government is set to finalize its proposal Nov. 20, with Google scheduled to respond Dec. 20. Any potential trial is likely months away, a timeline that could further change with the upcoming presidential election.
The parties will grapple over document concerns at a status conference scheduled for Oct. 24.