YouTubers sue Snap for alleged copyright infringement in training its AI models; TechCrunch, January 26, 2026

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch; YouTubers sue Snap for alleged copyright infringement in training its AI models

"A group of YouTubers who are suing tech giants for scraping their videos without permission to train AI models has now added Snap to their list of defendants. The plaintiffs — internet content creators behind a trio of YouTube channels with roughly 6.2 million collective subscribers — allege that Snap has trained its AI systems on their video content for use in AI features like the app’s “Imagine Lens,” which allows users to edit images using text prompts.

The plaintiffs earlier filed similar lawsuits against Nvidia, Meta, and ByteDance over similar matters.

In the newly filed proposed class action suit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the YouTubers specifically call out Snap for its use of a large-scale, video-language dataset known as HD-VILA-100M, and others that were designed for only academic and research purposes. To use these datasets for commercial purposes, the plaintiffs claim Snap circumvented YouTube’s technological restrictions, terms of service, and licensing limitations, which prohibit commercial use."

I Wanted to Stream Buffy, Angel, and Firefly for Free, But Not Like This; Gizmodo, November 30, 2018

Alex Cranz, Gizmodo; I Wanted to Stream Buffy, Angel, and Firefly for Free, But Not Like This

"This is TV that should be accessible to everyone, but Facebook Watch? Really? In order to watch Buffy take on a demon with a rocket launcher you have to be willing to sit there and stare at a video on the Facebook platform—the same place your cousin continues to post Daily Caller Trump videos and that friend from high school shares clips of a Tasty casserole made of butter, four tubes of biscuit dough, baked beans, and a hot dog? The price for complimentary access to three of the best shows produced is bargaining away your data and privacy?

No, thanks.

But Facebook is hoping we’ll all say yes, please. Facebook’s user growth in the U.S. notably hit a wall over the summer and it’s been trying to fix things. It’s also trying to make itself more “sticky,” so people stay on Facebook to get not just family and friend updates and memes, but also the streams and standard videos more commonly found on YouTube. Last year Facebook launched Watch, its YouTube competitor that was, from the start, filled with trash. But things have slowly improved, with the show Sorry for Your Loss gaining rave reviews."