YouTube users are suing Snap over alleged copyright infringement in training its AI models

A group of YouTubers who are suing the tech giants for stealing their videos without permission to train AI models has added Snap to its list of defendants. The plaintiffs — the online content creators behind three YouTube channels with nearly 6.2 million collective subscribers — allege that Snap trained its AI systems on their video content for use in AI features like the app’s “Imagine Lens,” which lets users edit photos with text prompts.

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

In the newly proposed class action lawsuit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, YouTubers specifically criticize Snap for its use of a broad video language dataset known as HD-VILA-100M, and other data that was designed for academic and research purposes only. To use these data sets for commercial purposes, the plaintiffs allege that Snap circumvented technological limitations, terms of service, and licensing restrictions imposed by YouTube, which prohibit commercial use.

The lawsuit seeks statutory damages and a permanent injunction to stop the alleged copyright infringement.

The same cause 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.

It’s now one of many lawsuits brought by content creators against AI model providers, which have included copyright disputes from publishers, authors, newspapers, user-generated content sites, artists, and more. It’s also not the first case to come from a YouTuber. According to the non-profit copyright organization, more than 70 copyright infringement cases have been filed against AI companies.

In some cases, like the one between Meta and a group of authors, the judge has ruled in favor of the tech giant. In other cases, such as the case between Anthropic and a group of authors, the AI ​​giant settled with plaintiffs and paid them money to resolve their claims. Many cases remain in active litigation.

Snap was asked for comment. TechCrunch will update if it becomes available.