Tech titan Nvidia now sees itself in the legal crosshairs as three American authors slap the chipmaker with a lawsuit. The writers claim that Nvidia’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, NeMo, utilized their copyrighted works without permission for its training regimen.
This incident has shone a light on the convoluted dynamics of copyrights, AI technology, and the course of modern knowledge consumption.
Litigation and Language Models
Authors Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O’Nan found their works ensnared in a data pool of approximately 196,640 books. This compilation served as a training ground for Nvidia’s NeMo, helping it master mimicry of human-like written language. Nvidia pulled down these resources in October, attributing the decision to “reported copyright infringement.”
The canonical works embroiled in the legal dispute include novels such as “Ghost Walk” by Keene (2008), “Like a Love Story” by Nazemian (2019), and the 2007 novella “Last Night at the Lobster” by O’Nan.
The authors have now initiated a class-action lawsuit in San Francisco’s federal court, demanding unspecific damages for copyright owners whose works trained NeMo’s large language models in the past three years.
Not an Isolated Issue
The Nvidia lawsuit is not an isolated event in today’s tech-driven world. As generative AI grows, so does the litigation allied with it. This AI branch generates novel content based on inputs like sounds, images, and texts. The intricate fabric of copyrights woven around created content has spurred contention in the developing AI landscape.
Nvidia has now become part of an expanding litigation universe that includes giants like Microsoft. Recent lawsuits target their partner OpenAI, the mastermind behind AI platform ChatGPT, as regulations struggle to keep pace with swiftly advancing technology.
Nvidia’s AI Ambitions and Stock Market Ascendance
Founded by the Taiwan-born American businessman Jensen Huang, Nvidia offers NeMo as a cost-effective solution for adopting generative AI. Previous developments have shown that the ascent of AI has further consolidated Nvidia’s position among investors.
The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker’s stock price saw an impressive surge of nearly 600% since 2022’s end. This surge propelled Nvidia’s market value close to a staggering US$2.2 trillion. Even as Nvidia’s ambitions strengthen its hold over investors, it may have to contend with emerging legal and ethical challenges threatening to punctuate the growth story.
As this case unfurls, it is poised to give much-needed insights into the budding intersections of tech innovation, intellectual property rights, and the evolving legal framework around them. Only time will tell how Nvidia and other similarly placed tech giants navigate these uncharted waters in an attempt to reshape the future of AI and information consumption.