By Blake Brittain

March 26 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms META.O, Nvidia NVDA.O and Roblox RBLX.N were hit with proposed class action lawsuits in California federal court on Thursday by a digital artist who alleged that the companies misused millions of 3D models to train generative artificial intelligence systems.

Los Angeles-based Austin Beaulier said in the complaints that the companies downloaded his and other artists' work from public repositories and used them to train AI systems to create their own 3D objects used in video games, virtual worlds and animation.

The lawsuits add to a wave of cases brought by visual artists, authors, news outlets and others against tech companies over their alleged misuse of copyrighted works to train AI chatbots and other generative systems. AI companies have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted material by transforming it into something new.

Beaulier, his attorney, and spokespeople for Meta, Nvidia and Roblox did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new complaints on Thursday.

Beaulier said in the complaints that he creates 3D models and distributes them through public databases where other creators can download and use them under Creative Commons licenses. These licenses generally forbid users from commercially exploiting the works they cover.

The complaints said Meta's SAM-3D, Nvidia's TRELLIS-500K, and Roblox's Cube3D AI-powered systems for generating 3D assets were trained on millions of works from the repositories without artists' permission. Beaulier asked the court for permission to represent nationwide classes of 3D artists against the companies and requested unspecified amounts of monetary damages.

The cases are Beaulier v. Meta Platforms Inc, Beaulier v. Nvidia Corp and Beaulier v. Roblox Corp, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:26-cv-02632.

For Beaulier: William Edelman of Milberg

For the tech companies: not yet available

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)