Nvidia, a leading chip manufacturer, is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that it used copyrighted books without permission to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. The lawsuit, initially filed in March 2024, has gained momentum with recent revelations of Nvidia's alleged direct engagement with online repositories of pirated materials.
The plaintiffs, a group of authors including Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, Stewart O'Nan, Andre Dubus III, and Susan Orlean, claim that Nvidia utilized their copyrighted works to train AI models like NeMo Megatron and Nemotron-4. They allege that Nvidia downloaded copyrighted material from various "shadow libraries," including LibGen, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, and Anna's Archive. These shadow libraries are known for providing free access to copyrighted materials.
Internal company documents revealed in court filings indicate that Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to gain high-speed access to copyrighted material for AI training. A member of Nvidia's data strategy team allegedly wrote to Anna's Archive, expressing interest in including the archive's content in pre-training data for large language models (LLMs). Despite warnings from Anna's Archive regarding the illegal nature of its collections, Nvidia management purportedly gave the "green light" to proceed. Anna's Archive then offered access to approximately 500 terabytes of data, including millions of copyrighted books, for a fee.
The lawsuit further claims that Nvidia provided scripts and tools to corporate customers, enabling them to automatically download datasets containing pirated books. Nvidia had previously trained its AI models on the Books3 dataset, which contains approximately 196,640 books copied from the pirate site Bibliotik.
Nvidia defends its actions by arguing that AI training on copyrighted material constitutes fair use under copyright law. The company contends that AI models use books as statistical data rather than reproducing them directly. This argument echoes similar defenses made by other AI companies facing copyright infringement lawsuits.
The case is significant as it marks the first time correspondence between a major US technology company and Anna's Archive has been publicly revealed in court proceedings. The authors are seeking statutory damages, actual damages, and compensation for what they describe as willful copyright violations. Hundreds of additional authors whose works appear in the pirated libraries could join the class-action suit.
This lawsuit is part of a growing wave of copyright litigation against AI companies. Other major AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, have also faced lawsuits alleging they trained models on pirated books from shadow libraries. These lawsuits highlight the tension between the rapid development of AI technology and the protection of intellectual property rights. The outcome of these cases could have significant implications for the future of AI development and the use of copyrighted material in AI training.
