AI is not only dangerous for human jobs; it can also create disasters for companies. One example is Chegg, an online student homework help service, which is losing traffic every day because of quick answers by ChatGPT and Google. Now, they think this is because of Google stealing their content and the matter has been sent to court. Find out why Chegg is suing Google and how this raises questions on the training of AI models.
Why Did Chegg sue Google?
Edtech company Chegg has sued Google claiming that the latter has stolen its content for AI training. This is hurting Chegg’s revenue by providing AI summaries in search results, trained on this “stolen” content.
Chegg says that Google has used its monopoly power to compel companies to provide proprietary content for their AI training and showing “AI Overview” in search results.
Here’s how this system works: Publishers (or websites) need to allow Google to access their content to train their AI models. Google then shows “AI Overview” snippets in their search results based on this AI training. If publishers block Google for any AI training, they might not rank at the beginning of the search results and lose the traffic.
Chegg is putting the following allegations against the world’s biggest search engine:
- Scraped and used Chegg’s proprietary study materials to enhance its AI-generated answers.
- Displayed direct solutions to students without crediting or compensating Chegg.
- Blocked traffic that previously went to Chegg’s website, cutting into its business.
The lawsuit is filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Edtech company now wants compensation for their damages and injunction for Google’s unfair conduct.
Reddit CEO said this about the lawsuit:
“Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg – it’s about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries. … This will eventually lead to a hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust.”
-Nate Schultz, CEO, Reddit
Google’s Spokesperson has this to say in their defense:
“With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites.”
-Jose Castaneda, Spokesperson, Google
Google has always defended their “AI training” as fair, with an argument that their first responsibility is to provide the best and instant answers to their users, and AI overview is now a necessity for the time. But online news outlets as well as independent bloggers have already expressed concerns over AI summaries as well as Google’s dominance.
How did Chegg’s Downfall start?
Chegg is (or we can say “was”) a dominant player in the education technology sector offering study materials, tutoring, and homework assistance to students. For years, it had a massive team of human experts who offered tutoring lessons and assignment answers for a fee or subscription. While this business model worked for years, the rise of AI became its terminator.
AI chatbots like ChatGPT destroyed it by providing assignment answers in seconds, and that too, free of cost. The stock had fallen from over $100 to now suvivng at $1.
Even with Chegg’s attempts to integrate some AI-driven solutions into its services, students were not convinced that it could generally match ChatGPT’s accessibility.
The Battle of Stealing Content for AI Training
This lawsuit reflects a larger debate in the tech industry that many content providers fear that AI models are being trained using their content without consent or compensation.
Chegg alleges that Google’s AI Overviews have changed from an ordinary Search to an “answer engine.” It claims that in January 2025, Chegg lost 49% of its non-subscriber users and fell into an uncontrollable financial crisis.
Some of the analysts say that Chegg’s lawsuit against Google is a desperate last attempt to stay relevant, not a real long-term solution.
However, if Chegg wins this case, then there is a strong chance other EdTech companies who are threatened by AI-based search results will be thinking of a similar lawsuit.
There is also this debate going side-by-side on how AI is ruining learning, with many universities wanting to restrict its usage. There were rumors earlier also that AI companies like ChatGPT want to introduce an AI detection content, especially for the education sector.
Takeaways
Whether Chegg has bought itself time through this lawsuit or the greater challenge lies in redefining itself still needs to be discussed. What we know is that students embrace AI learning tools. A Harvard Survey showed that 87.5% of the students use Generative AI at least once weekly. In any situation, education companies will have to rethink their business strategies!
