Nvidia Faces Lawsuit for AI Use of Books

Three authors have filed a lawsuit against Nvidia alleging unauthorized use of their copyrighted books in training its NeMo AI platform.

Authors including Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O’Nan have accused Nvidia of using their works as part of a dataset that involves around 196,640 volumes to train its NeMo AI platform.

Further, due to reported copyright infringement the dataset was taken down in October.

The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday night. The authors said that the takedown of the dataset by Nvidia reflects the acknowledgment of training NeMo and thereby copyright infringement.

The writers are seeking unspecified damages on behalf of US writers of the copyrighted works that were used over the previous three years that contributed to the training of NeMo’s large language models.

Among the works included in the lawsuit are Ghost Walk written by Brian Keene, Last Night at the Lobster written by Stewart O’Nan, and Like a Love Story written by Abdi Nazemian.

However, Nvidia has refrained from commenting on the matter of copyright infringement while on the other hand, the lawyers representing the authors are yet to provide additional statements on the matter.

Additionally, this complaint adds Nvidia to the list of corporations facing legal scrutiny for generative AI technology, that generates new material based on various inputs.

Nvidia’s NeMo platform  is praised for its speed and cost-effectiveness in implementing generative AI, gaining attention from both creators and litigators. Companies such as OpenAI, and Microsoft, have faced lawsuits over similar technology.

Nvidia has become quite popular among investors due to the increasing prevalence of AI. Since 2022, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has observed a 600% increase in its stock price leading to a market value of nearly US$2.2 trillion.