YouTubers and others sue Snap for copyright infringement in training AI models

A group of YouTubers suing the tech giant for scraping their videos without permission to train AI models has now added Snap to its list of defendants. The plaintiffs, Internet content creators who operate three YouTube channels with a total of about 6.2 million subscribers, allege that Snap trained its AI system on video content for use in AI features such as the app’s “Imagine Lenses,” which allow users to edit images using text prompts.

Plaintiffs previously filed similar lawsuits against Nvidia, Meta, and ByteDance over similar issues.

In a new proposed class action lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, YouTubers specifically accuse Snap of using a large video language dataset known as HD-VILA-100M, as well as other datasets designed solely for academic and research purposes. In order to use these datasets for commercial purposes, the plaintiffs allege, Snap circumvented YouTube’s technical restrictions, terms of service, and licensing restrictions that prohibit commercial use.

The lawsuit seeks statutory damages and a permanent injunction to stop any future copyright infringement claims.

The lawsuit itself is being led by the creators of the h3h3 YouTube channel, which has 5.52 million subscribers, and the smaller golf channels MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics.

This is one of many lawsuits currently pitting content creators against AI model providers, including copyright disputes by publishers, authors, newspapers, user-generated content sites, artists, and others. This is not the first case involving former YouTubers. More than 70 copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed against AI companies, according to the nonprofit Copyright Alliance.

In some cases, judges have ruled in favor of the tech giants, such as the case between Meta and a group of authors. In some cases, like the case between Anthropic and a group of authors, the AI ​​giant has settled with plaintiffs and paid them to resolve their claims. Many lawsuits are still pending.

Snap has been contacted for comment. TechCrunch will update if available.