Google Accused of Copying Code, Deleting Authors' Names

Google's open-source mobile automation tool Artemis has been accused of plagiarizing code from an earlier project called mobile-use developed by French AI startup Minitap.

Minitap, which was founded in 2025 by Nicolas Dehandschoewercker, created mobile-use as an open-source research project that enables AI agents to control real Android devices through natural language. The project was so successful that it topped the AndroidWorld benchmark maintained by Google DeepMind, becoming the first agent framework to achieve a 100% task success rate.

However, when Minitap checked the code of Artemis, they found that 228 out of 229 files were identical to their own project, including specific implementation details and even historical bugs. Furthermore, the names of three authors who originally contributed to mobile-use - Pierre-Louis Favreau, Jean-Pierre Lo, and Nicolas Dehandschoewercker - had been removed from the Git history of Artemis in a Force Push earlier this year.

Minitap's founder expressed disappointment not just that their code was used without permission, but also that the original author information was erased. He emphasized that while they don't mind Google using their code under an open-source license, they do expect proper attribution to be given.