The Google NotebookLM team has become ensnared in a controversy surrounding AI plagiarism, presenting a substantial public relations dilemma. The team's official account shared an infographic of an AI-generated recipe, with the intention of showcasing its image model and chart-generating prowess. Nevertheless, this action swiftly triggered allegations of plagiarism, compelling Google to swiftly remove the relevant post.

X (formerly Twitter) user Nate Hake, upon conducting a comparison, found that the list of ingredients and the steps for preparation in the AI-crafted recipe bore striking resemblances to an earlier post on a food blog. This led him to infer that the model had directly "copied word for word" content from the original webpage, failing to give due credit to the author. Hake condemned Google's strategic pivot, asserting that it had overstepped ethical and legal bounds, contravened the website's terms of service, and sought to exploit its dominance in the search engine realm to create an 'answer monopoly.' This, in turn, has caused a significant drop in click-through rates for creators of original content.