Tech giant Nvidia is currently facing a lawsuit from a group of authors who claim that the company used their copyrighted works without permission to train its artificial intelligence platform NeMo. Authors Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O'Nan allege that their works were included in a dataset of 196,640 books used to train NeMo before being removed in October due to reported copyright infringement.
The authors filed a proposed class action lawsuit in San Francisco federal court seeking unspecified damages for individuals in the U.S. whose copyrighted works were used to train NeMo's large language models (LLMs) over the past three years. LLMs are essential for powering AI tools like NeMo, which Nvidia touts as a fast and affordable way to adopt generative AI.
Among the works included in the lawsuit are Keene's novel "Ghost Walk," Nazemian's novel "Like a Love Story," and O'Nan's novella "Last Night at the Lobster." Nvidia has admitted to training NeMo on the dataset known as "The Pile," which contained a collection of books called "Books3."
The lawsuit is part of a growing trend of legal actions against tech companies for copyright infringement related to AI training. Nvidia's role as a leading chipmaker for AI technology has seen its stock surge by nearly 600% since the end of 2022, giving the company a market value of nearly $2.2 trillion.
Nvidia has declined to comment on the pending litigation. The company's involvement in this lawsuit adds to the complex legal landscape surrounding AI technology and copyright infringement, with other high-profile cases involving companies like OpenAI and Microsoft.
Overall, the lawsuit against Nvidia highlights the ongoing challenges and legal disputes in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence and intellectual property rights.