Authors sue Nvidia over alleged copyright infringement in training NeMo AI

Copyright challenge: Nvidia, known for its chips powering artificial intelligence, faces legal action from three authors alleging copyright infringement. Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O'Nan claim Nvidia used their copyrighted books without consent to train its NeMo AI platform. The authors assert their works were part of a dataset comprising around 196,640 books used to train NeMo to mimic ordinary written language. This dataset was subsequently removed in response to reported copyright violations in October.

In a class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court, the authors argue that Nvidia's acknowledgement of training NeMo on the dataset constitutes copyright infringement. They seek unspecified damages for US copyright holders whose works contributed to training NeMo's large language models over the past three years. Among the works cited in the lawsuit are Keene's "Ghost Walk" (2008), Nazemian's "Like a Love Story" (2019), and O'Nan's "Last Night at the Lobster" (2007).

Nvidia has declined to comment on the matter, while lawyers representing the authors have yet to respond to requests for additional comment.

This legal action adds Nvidia to a growing list of companies facing litigation from authors and organisations such as the New York Times concerning generative AI. Generative AI technologies, like NeMo, create new content based on various inputs, including text, images, and sounds. Nvidia promotes NeMo as an efficient and cost-effective solution for adopting generative AI.

Other companies, including OpenAI (developer of the AI platform ChatGPT) and its partner Microsoft, have also faced lawsuits related to this technology.

Despite legal challenges, Nvidia remains a favoured investment choice due to the rising prominence of AI. The Santa Clara-based chipmaker has seen its stock price surge by nearly 600 per cent since the end of 2022, propelling its market value to nearly $2.2 trillion.

(With Reuters inputs)