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Strike 3 Holdings, a company that says it makes \u201chigh quality,\u201d \u201cfeminist,\u201d and \u201cethical\u201d adult videos, is suing Meta in a federal court in California for allegedly infringing its copyright-protected content and using it to train AI models. The complaint, filed in July, alleges Meta has been torrenting and seeding Strike 3\u2019s videos since 2018. Associated exhibits and details of the complaint were unsealed last week.<\/p>\n
Strike 3 alleges Meta\u2019s motive was partly to obtain otherwise difficult-to-scrape visual angles, parts of the human body, and extended, uninterrupted scenes\u2014rare in mainstream movies and TV\u2014to help it create what Mark Zuckerberg calls AI \u201csuperintelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have an interest in getting our content because it can give them a competitive advantage for the quality, fluidity, and humanity of the AI,\u201d alleges Christian Waugh, an attorney for Strike 3.<\/p>\n
The complaint also claims Meta BitTorrented and distributed 2,396 of Strike 3\u2019s copyright-protected porn videos, meaning it allegedly used the BitTorrent protocol to download and distribute large files, which is illegal if the downloaded files are copyrighted. This process made Strike 3\u2019s porn videos accessible to minors, the complaint alleges, since BitTorrent does not have age verification. Meta used and continues to use Strike 3\u2019s porn \u201cfor distribution as currency to support its downloading of a vast array of other content necessary to train its AI models,\u201d the complaint alleges.<\/p>\n
The Exhibits list includes titles Meta allegedly took from a variety of non-pornographic sources, such as episodes of Yellowstone, Modern Family, The Bachelor, South Park,<\/em> and Downton Abbey<\/em>, among other mainstream television shows.<\/p>\n But it also lists titles of non\u2013Strike 3 porn videos that may include very young actors, such as: ExploitedTeens, Anal Teens, Asian Teen Masturbation, CasualTeenSex,<\/em> and EuroTeenErotica<\/em>. The list includes titles relating to weapons, such as: 3D Gun Print<\/em> and Gun Digest Shooter\u2019s Guide to the AR-15<\/em>. It also features materials called Antifa\u2019s Radical Plan<\/em> and, ironically, Intellectual Property Rights in Cyberspace<\/em>.<\/p>\n Using adult content as training data is \u201ca public relations disaster waiting to happen,\u201d says Matthew Sag, professor of law in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science at Emory University. Imagine a middle school student asks a Meta AI model for a video about pizza delivery, he says, and before you know it, it\u2019s porn.<\/p>\n Per the lawsuit, Strike 3 has \u201cdeveloped, owns, and operates\u201d infringement-detection systems that allowed it to identify Meta\u2019s alleged violations, which it says took place via 47 distinct Meta-affiliated IP addresses. Based on statutory infringement penalties, the company is demanding $350 million.<\/p>\n Christopher Sgro, a Meta spokesperson, told WIRED: \u201cWe\u2019re reviewing the complaint, but we don\u2019t believe Strike\u2019s claims are accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Meta researchers, its V-JEPA 2 \u201cworld model,\u201d released in June, was trained on 1 million hours of \u201cinternet video\u201d\u2014a term Strike 3\u2019s complaint points out is left unspecified. The company\u2019s AI ambitions are both grand and rooted in the personal: Zuckerberg has said publicly that Meta plans to put \u201cthe power of superintelligence into people\u2019s hands to direct it toward what they value in their own lives.\u201d Meta\u2019s signature smart glasses, for example, are designed to give users \u201cpersonal superintelligence,\u201d Zuckerberg reiterated at the Meta Connect event on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Using pirated material as training data was reportedly an active choice made by Meta executives and approved by Zuckerberg directly. Nearly every major AI company has been accused of similar practices, according to ongoing AI copyright lawsuits.<\/p>\n \u201cThe case being presented against Meta is perhaps the case of the century because of the sheer scope of infringement,\u201d Waugh says. He claims that Strike 3 has access to a wide selection of copyrighted content that Meta employees allegedly BitTorrented and that the unsealed exhibits represent only \u201ca thin slice of the pie.\u201d<\/p>\n AI companies have previously argued that their technologies are transformative, meaning they do not result in the direct copying of rights holders\u2019 works, which should grant them fair use. President Trump has weighed in on this issue in apparent support of tech companies. \u201cYou can\u2019t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you\u2019ve read or studied you\u2019re supposed to pay for,\u201d he said in July.<\/p>\n In June, US District Court judge Vince Chhabria ruled that Meta did not violate the law when training its AI models on 13 authors\u2019 copyrighted books in a separate suit, Kadrey v. Meta<\/em>. However, he explicitly stated his ruling does not mean he found Meta\u2019s use of copyrighted materials to train its AI models to be lawful. Instead, the ruling \u201cstands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one,\u201d Chhabria said.<\/p>\n That means there is potentially room for Strike 3 to make a stronger case. \u201cThe best version of their argument is: This is a fundamental problem because, by going to these pirate websites, you are undermining the market for access,\u201d says Sag.<\/p>\n To Waugh, this level of alleged corporate copyright infringement touches on a fundamental issue. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s a four-sentence poem or adult entertainment," he says. "There is no appetite in this country for what AI companies appear to be doing, which is making money off the backs of rights holders who never gave permission for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Strike 3 Holdings, a company that says it makes \u201chigh quality,\u201d \u201cfeminist,\u201d and \u201cethical\u201d adult videos, is suing Meta in a federal court in California for allegedly infringing its copyright-protected content and using it to train AI models. The complaint, filed in July, alleges Meta has been torrenting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}