Nvidia sued by author for using copyrighted work in artificial intelligence

Nvidia, whose chips power artificial intelligence, has been sued by three authors who say it used their copyrighted books without permission to train its NeMo AI platform.

Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian and Stewart O’Nan said their work was part of a data set of approximately 196,640 books that helped train NeMo to simulate ordinary written language but were removed in October “due to reports of copyright infringement.”

In a class-action lawsuit filed Friday night in San Francisco federal court, the authors said the removal reflects Nvidia’s “admission” that it trained NeMo on the dataset, thereby violating their copyright.

They are seeking unspecified damages for Americans whose copyrighted work helped train NeMo’s so-called large language model over the past three years.

The lawsuit covers works including Keane’s 2008 novel “Ghost Walk,” Nazemian’s 2019 novel “Like a Love Story,” and O’Nan’s 2007 novella “The Last Night of the Lobster.”

Nvidia declined to comment on Sunday. An attorney for the author did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on Sunday.

The lawsuit drags Nvidia into a growing list of lawsuits filed by writers and The New York Times over generative artificial intelligence, 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 artificial intelligence.

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

The rise of AI has made Nvidia a favorite among investors.

The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker’s shares have 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, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-01454.

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