Nvidia is sued by authors for artificial intelligence use of copyrighted works

Nvidia whose chips power artificial intelligence, was sued by three authors who said he used their copyrighted books without permission to train his NeMo AI platform.

Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian and Stewart O’Nan said their works were part of a dataset of about 196,640 books that helped NeMo simulate ordinary written language, before being removed in October “due to a reported copyright infringement”.

In a proposed class action filed Friday evening in federal court in San Francisco, the authors said the takedown reflects the fact that Nvidia “admitted” to having trained NeMo on the dataset, thereby infringing their copyrights .

They are seeking unspecified damages for people in the United States whose copyrighted works helped shape NeMo’s so-called large language patterns over the past three years.

Among the works covered by the lawsuit are Keene’s 2008 novel “Ghost Walk,” Nazemian’s 2019 novel “Like a Love Story” and O’Nan’s 2007 short story “Last Night at the Lobster.”

Nvidia declined to comment Sunday. Lawyers for the authors did not immediately respond to requests Sunday for further comment.

The lawsuit drags Nvidia into a growing number of disputes from writers, as well as the New York Times, over generative artificial intelligence, which creates new content based on inputs such as text, images and sounds.

Nvidia advertises NeMo as a fast and cheap way to adopt generative artificial intelligence.

Other companies sued over the technology include OpenAI, which created the AI ​​platform ChatGPT, and its partner Microsoft.

The rise of artificial intelligence has made Nvidia an investor favorite.

The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker’s stock price has risen nearly 600% since the end of 2022, giving Nvidia a market value of nearly $2.2 trillion.

The case is Nazemian et al v. Nvidia Corp, United States District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-01454.