Apple now faces a class action lawsuit in the United States after several YouTube creators accused the company of using their videos without permission to train its artificial intelligence models. The complaint claims Apple accessed and scraped millions of copyrighted videos, which the creators say directly violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and undermines the rights of content owners.
According to the lawsuit filed in California federal court, the plaintiffs argue that Apple deliberately bypassed YouTube’s safeguards that prevent large-scale scraping. They state that Apple then used that data to improve its AI systems and generate commercial value, while the original creators received no compensation or credit for their work.
The complaint further claims that Apple’s own research papers point to the use of YouTube videos in training datasets, which the plaintiffs believe includes their content. As a result, the creators are seeking financial damages along with a court order to stop Apple from continuing these practices.
Channels involved in the lawsuit
h3h3Productions, created by Ethan and Hila Klein, runs one of the largest creator networks in this case, while the other channels focus on golf content and also hold significant audiences.
The lawsuit also follows similar legal action taken by these creators against companies such as Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance, and Snap, which signals a broader conflict between content creators and AI developers over how training data is sourced and used.
