As reported by Reuters via Yahoo Finance, graphics processing unit maker, Nvidia, has found itself in a legal battle after three authors filed a lawsuit claiming that their copyrighted works were used without permission to train Nvidia's NeMo AI platform.
According to the lawsuit, authors Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O'Nan alleged that their works were part of a dataset of approximately 196,640 books, which were used to train NeMo to simulate ordinary written language before being taken down due to reported copyright infringement. The authors argued that this takedown was an admission by Nvidia that it had indeed trained NeMo on the dataset, thereby infringing on their copyrights. They are now seeking unspecified damages for people in the United States whose copyrighted works helped train NeMo's so-called large language models 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 novella "Last Night at the Lobster". According to Reuters, Nvidia declined to comment on the lawsuit when approached for comment at time of press. Lawyers for the authors also did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment at time of press.
This lawsuit is part of a growing body of litigation by writers, including the New York Times, over generative AI, which creates new content based on inputs such as text, images, and sounds. Nvidia touts NeMo as a fast and affordable way to adopt generative AI. Other companies sued over the technology have included OpenAI, which created the AI platform ChatGPT, and its partner Microsoft.
Despite the lawsuit, AI's rise has made Nvidia a favorite of investors. The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker's stock price has risen almost 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, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-01454.