YouTubers Take Snap To Court Over Alleged Copyright Violations In AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way we create and consume content, yet as these systems get smarter, questions are popping up about where the training data actually comes from. Many creators are realizing their work might be helping AI without their knowledge, and that’s starting to stir some serious legal battles.

The latest twist is Snap, which has just been added to the growing list of tech companies being sued by YouTubers who say their videos were used without permission to train AI.

TL;DR

 

• A group of YouTubers are suing Snap, claiming their videos were used without permission to train AI.
• The case is led by h3h3 and two golf channels, citing YouTube rule violations.
• Snap allegedly turned research-only video datasets into commercial AI tools.
• This adds to a growing wave of copyright battles over AI content use.

As the debate over how AI models are trained continues to grow, Snap is now facing legal action from a group of YouTubers who claim their content was used without consent.

The creators have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Snap, accusing the company of scraping YouTube videos to train its AI systems. The suit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, points to Snap’s AI features, including its “Imagine Lens,” which allows users to edit images using text prompts.

The plaintiffs are behind three YouTube channels including h3h3, MrShortGame Golf, and Golfholics, which together reach about 6.2 million subscribers. The case is being led by the creators of the h3h3 channel, which has 5.52 million subscribers on its own.

According to the complaint, Snap used large-scale video-language datasets such as HD-VILA-100M, which were created for academic and research purposes only. The YouTubers allege Snap bypassed YouTube’s technical safeguards, terms of service, and licensing limits to use the content commercially, something YouTube explicitly prohibits.
 
This lawsuit follows similar legal action by the same group against NVIDIA, Meta, and ByteDance, all over alleged unauthorized use of their videos for AI training.

The creators are seeking statutory damages, along with a permanent injunction to stop Snap from continuing the alleged copyright infringement.

The case adds to a growing list of lawsuits challenging how AI companies source training data. Content creators, publishers, authors, artists, and news organizations have all raised concerns over the use of copyrighted material. According to the nonprofit Copyright Alliance, more than 70 copyright infringement cases have been filed against AI companies so far.

Results have varied. Some cases, including one involving Meta and a group of authors, have ended in favor of tech companies, while others, such as a dispute between Anthropic and authors, were settled. Many of these cases, including the one against Snap, are still working their way through the courts.