Nvidia, a leading chipmaker known for its contributions to artificial intelligence (AI), is facing a lawsuit filed by three authors—Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O’Nan. The authors allege that Nvidia used their copyrighted books without permission to train its NeMo AI platform.

The authors claim that their works were part of a dataset of approximately 196,640 books that helped train NeMo to simulate ordinary written language. The dataset was taken down in October 2023 “due to reported copyright infringement.” The authors argue that Nvidia’s removal of the dataset serves as an admission that NeMo was trained on copyrighted material, leading to copyright infringement.

The proposed class action, filed in San Francisco federal court, seeks unspecified damages for individuals in the United States whose copyrighted works contributed to training NeMo’s large language models in the past three years. The authors involved in the lawsuit include Brian Keene, known for the 2008 novel “Ghost Walk”; Abdi Nazemian, author of the 2019 novel “Like a Love Story”; and Stewart O’Nan, the writer of the 2007 novella “Last Night at the Lobster.”

Nvidia has not commented on the lawsuit, and lawyers for the authors did not immediately respond to requests for additional comments. The lawsuit is part of a broader trend in the tech industry, with writers and organizations, such as the New York Times, pursuing legal action over generative AI, which creates new content based on various inputs. Nvidia’s NeMo AI platform has been promoted as a fast and affordable tool for adopting generative AI.

This legal challenge is one of several faced by companies in the tech industry, including OpenAI and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), in connection with the use of generative AI technology. Nvidia’s prominence in the AI field has made it a target for litigation, and the company’s stock price has seen substantial growth, with its market value reaching nearly $2.2 trillion. The case is titled Nazemian et al v Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and is filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, under case number 24-01454.