Jan 15 (Reuters) - Publishers Hachette Book Group and

Cengage Group asked a California federal court on

Thursday for permission to intervene in a proposed class action

lawsuit against Google over the alleged misuse of

copyrighted material used to ‌train its artificial intelligence

systems.

The publishers said in their proposed complaint that the tech

company "engaged ​in one of the most prolific infringements of

copyrighted materials in ‍history" to build its AI capabilities,

copying content from ⁠Hachette books and ⁠Cengage textbooks

without permission.

Spokespeople for Google did not immediately respond to a

request for comment ‌on the publishers' bid, which could ​increase

the potential damages at stake in the case.

"We believe our participation will bolster the case,

especially because publishers ⁠are uniquely positioned to address

many ‍of the ​legal, factual, and evidentiary questions before the

Court," Maria Pallante, CEO of the publishers' trade group the

Association of American Publishers, ‍said in a statement.

The lawsuit currently involves a group of visual artists who

sued Google for allegedly misusing their work to train an

AI-powered image generator. The case is one of many high-stakes

lawsuits brought by artists, authors, music labels and other

copyright owners ​against ‍tech companies over their AI training.

Anthropic settled a lawsuit for $1.5 billion last year with a

group of authors suing ​over its use of their work to train its

AI chatbot Claude.

The publishers on Thursday cited 10 examples of their

textbooks and other books that Google allegedly misused from

authors, including Scott Turow and N.K. Jemisin to train its

Gemini large language model. They asked the court for an

unspecified amount ​of monetary damages on behalf of themselves

and a larger class of authors and publishers.

U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee will decide whether to approve

the publishers' request to ‍join the case.