Three authors, Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O'Nan, have filed a lawsuit against Nvidia, a leading provider of chips for artificial intelligence, alleging unauthorised use of their copyrighted books in training its NeMo AI platform.


The authors claim that their works were included in a dataset of approximately 196,640 books used to train NeMo in generating ordinary written language. Nvidia reportedly took down the dataset in October following reports of copyright infringement.


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According to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday night, the authors argue that Nvidia's removal of the dataset implies acknowledgement of training NeMo with their copyrighted material, thereby violating their copyrights.


Seeking unspecified damages, the lawsuit aims to represent individuals in the United States whose copyrighted works contributed to training NeMo's large language models over the past three years. Among the cited works are Keene's "Ghost Walk" (2008), Nazemian's "Like a Love Story" (2019), and O'Nan's "Last Night at the Lobster" (2007).


Nvidia declined to provide comment on the matter, while lawyers representing the authors did not respond immediately to requests for additional statements.


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This legal action adds Nvidia to a growing list of defendants facing litigation from writers and organisations like the New York Times over generative AI technologies, which generate new content based on various inputs such as text and images.


Nvidia promotes NeMo as an efficient and cost-effective solution for adopting generative AI. Other companies, including OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT AI platform, and its partner Microsoft, have also faced lawsuits over similar technology.


The increasing prevalence of AI has driven Nvidia's popularity among investors. The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has experienced a nearly 600% surge in its stock price since the end of 2022, resulting in a market value of nearly $2.2 trillion.