Meta claims pornography downloaded in AI Center lawsuit was ‘for personal use’

Furthermore, this alleged activity cannot be reliably linked to any Meta employee, Meta claims.

Strike 3 “does not identify any of the individuals who purportedly used these Meta IP addresses, claim that any of them were employed by Meta or had any role in training Meta’s AI, or determine whether the content allegedly downloaded was used to train any specific Meta model,” Meta wrote.

Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of employees,” as well as “countless contractors, visitors and third parties, access the Internet at Meta every day,” Meta said. So, while it is “possible that one or more Meta employees” have been downloading Strike 3 content over the past seven years, it is “entirely possible” that a “guest or independent exploiter,” a “contractor, vendor, or repair person — or any combination of these people — could be responsible for this activity,” Meta claims.

Among other alleged activities was an allegation that one of Meta’s contractors was directed to download adult content at his father’s home, but those downloads also “clearly indicate personal consumption,” Meta said. Meta noted that this contractor was working as an “automation engineer,” without providing a clear basis for why he was expected to obtain AI training data in this role. “There are no reasonable facts” linking Meta to those downloads, Meta claims.

“The fact that torrenting was stopped when its contract with Meta expired says nothing about whether the alleged torrenting was done with Meta’s knowledge or direction,” Meta wrote.

Meta criticizes the theory of artificial intelligence training, describing it as “illogical”

Perhaps what’s most confusing to Meta about Strike 3’s complaint is the claim about a “stealth network” of hidden IP addresses. This represents “another dilemma” that Strike 3 failed to address, Meta claims, writing, “Why would Meta seek to ‘hide’ some of the alleged downloads of Plaintiffs’ and third-party content, while using Meta’s IP addresses that could be easily traced to hundreds more?”

“The obvious answer is that it won’t,” Meta claims, criticizing Strike 3’s “entire AI training theory” as “illogical and unsupported.”