Meta Denies AI Training Claims in Porn Piracy Lawsuit, Argues Downloads Were for Personal Use

Meta says porn downloads on its IPs were for "personal use," not AI training

This week, Meta asked a US district court to toss a lawsuit alleging that the tech giant illegally torrented pornography to train AI. The move comes after Strike 3 Holdings discovered illegal downloads of some of its adult films on Meta corporate IP addresses, as well as other downloads that Meta allegedly concealed using a "stealth network" of 2,500 "hidden IP addresses." Accusing Meta of stealing porn to secretly train an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen, Strike 3 sought damages that could have exceeded $350 million, TorrentFreak reported. Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on "guesswork and innuendo," while writing that Strike 3 "has been labeled by some as a 'copyright troll' that files extortive lawsuits." Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there was no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3 -- or was even aware of the illegal activity. Strike 3 also cited "no facts to suggest that Meta has ever trained an AI model on adult images or video, much less intentionally so," Meta argued. "These claims are bogus," Meta's spokesperson told Ars. Meta argues downloads were for "personal use" Notably, the flagged downloads spanned seven years, starting in 2018. That's about four years before Meta's AI efforts "researching Multimodal Models and Generative Video" began -- making it implausible the downloads were intended for AI training, Meta argued. An even more "glaring" defect, Meta argued, is that Meta's terms prohibit generating adult content, "contradicting the premise that such materials might even be useful for Meta's AI training." Instead, Meta argued, available evidence "is plainly indicative" that the flagged adult content was torrented for "private personal use" -- since the small amount linked to Meta IP addressess and employees represented only "a few dozen titles per year intermittently obtained one file at a time." "The far more plausible inference to be drawn from such meager, uncoordinated activity is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use," Meta's filing said. For example, unlike lawsuits raised by book authors whose works are part of an enormous dataset used to train AI, the activity on Meta's corporate IP addresses only amounted to about 22 downloads per year. That is nowhere near the "concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training," Meta argued. Further, that alleged activity can't even reliably be linked to any Meta employee, Meta argued. Strike 3 "does not identify any of the individuals who supposedly used these Meta IP addresses, allege that any were employed by Meta or had any role in AI training at Meta, or specify whether (and which) content allegedly downloaded was used to train any particular Meta model," Meta wrote. Meanwhile, "tens of thousands of employees," as well as "innumerable contractors, visitors, and third parties access the Internet at Meta every day," Meta argued. So while it's "possible one or more Meta employees" downloaded Strike 3's content over the last seven years, "it is just as possible" that a "guest, or freeloader," or "contractor, or vendor, or repair person -- or any combination of such persons -- was responsible for that activity," Meta suggested. Other alleged activity included a claim that a Meta contractor was directed to download adult content at his father's house, but those downloads, too, "are plainly indicative of personal consumption," Meta argued. That contractor worked as an "automation engineer," Meta noted, with no apparent basis provided for why he would be expected to source AI training data in that role. "No facts plausibly" tie "Meta to those downloads," Meta claimed. "The fact that the torrenting allegedly stopped when his contract with Meta ended says nothing about whether the alleged torrenting was performed with Meta's knowledge or at its direction," Meta wrote. Meta slams AI training theory as "nonsensical" Possibly most baffling to Meta in Strike 3's complaint, however, is the claim about the "stealth network" of hidden IPs. This presents "yet another conundrum" that Strike 3 "fails to address," Meta suggested, writing, "why would Meta seek to 'conceal' certain alleged downloads of Plaintiffs' and third-party content, but use easily traceable Meta corporate IP addresses for many hundreds of others?" "The obvious answer is that it would not do so," Meta argued," slamming Strike 3's "entire AI training theory" as "nonsensical and unsupported." Finally, Meta noted that Strike 3 cannot claim that Meta should have been better at "policing" its network for illegal activity. "Monitoring every file downloaded by any person using Meta's global network would be an extraordinarily complex and invasive undertaking," Meta argued, citing precedent that only requires Meta employ a "simple measure" to monitor such activity. Meta is hoping the court will agree that Strike 3 failed to prove Meta had anything to do with the illegal downloads. Strike 3 has two weeks to respond, TorrentFreak reported. For Meta, defeating the lawsuit is not just a matter of avoiding damages but also defending its commitment to ensuring its AI video tools don't generate explicit content that's increasingly regulated. In the filing, Meta suggested that Strike 3 provided no evidence that Meta trained AI on its content because "there was none." "We don't want this type of content, and we take deliberate steps to avoid training on this kind of material," Meta's spokesperson told Ars.

Meta Claims Downloaded Porn at Center of AI Lawsuit Was for 'Personal Use'

This week, Meta asked a US district court to toss a lawsuit alleging that the tech giant illegally torrented pornography to train AI. The move comes after Strike 3 Holdings discovered illegal downloads of some of its adult films on Meta corporate IP addresses, as well as other downloads that Meta allegedly concealed using a "stealth network" of 2,500 "hidden IP addresses." Accusing Meta of stealing porn to secretly train an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen, Strike 3 sought damages that could have exceeded $350 million, TorrentFreak reported. Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on "guesswork and innuendo," while alleging that Strike 3 "has been labeled by some as a 'copyright troll' that files extortive lawsuits." Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there is no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3 -- or was even aware of the illegal activity. Strike 3 also cited "no facts to suggest that Meta has ever trained an AI model on adult images or video, much less intentionally so," Meta claimed. "These claims are bogus," Meta's spokesperson told Ars. Notably, the alleged downloads spanned seven years, starting in 2018. That's about four years before Meta's AI efforts "researching Multimodal Models and Generative Video" began, making it implausible the downloads were intended for AI training, Meta claims. An even more "glaring" defect, Meta claims, is that Meta's terms prohibit generating adult content, "contradicting the premise that such materials might even be useful for Meta's AI training." Instead, Meta claims, available evidence "is plainly indicative" that the flagged adult content was torrented for "private personal use" -- since the small amount linked to Meta IP addresses and employees represented only "a few dozen titles per year intermittently obtained one file at a time." "The far more plausible inference to be drawn from such meager, uncoordinated activity is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use," Meta's filing says. For example, unlike lawsuits raised by book authors whose works are part of an enormous dataset used to train AI, the activity on Meta's corporate IP addresses allegedly only amounted to about 22 downloads per year. That is nowhere near the "concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training," Meta claims.

Meta Says Porn Stash was for 'Personal Use,' Not Training AI Models

Meta forgot to keep its porn in a passworded folder, and now its kink for data collection is the subject of scrutiny. The social media giant turned metaverse company turned AI power is currently facing a lawsuit brought by adult film companies Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media, alleging that the Big Tech staple illegally torrented thousands of porn videos to be used for training AI models. Meta denies the claims, and recently filed a motion to dismiss the case because, in part, it's more likely the videos were downloaded for “private personal use.†To catch up on the details of the case, back in July, Strike 3 Holdings (the producers of Blacked, Blacked Raw, Tushy, Tushy Raw, Vixen, MILFY, and Slayed) and Counterlife Media accused Meta of having “willfully and intentionally†infringed “at least 2,396 movies†by downloading and seeding torrents of the content. The companies claim that Meta used that material to train AI models and allege the company may be planning a currently unannounced adult version of its AI video generator Movie Gen, and are suing for $359 million in damages. For what it's worth, Strike 3 has something of a reputation of being a very aggressive copyright litigantâ€"so much so that if you search the company, you're less likely to land on its homepage than you are to find a litany of law firms that offer legal representation to people who have received a subpoena from the company for torrenting their material. There may be some evidence that those materials were swept up in Meta's data vacuum. Per TorrentFreak, Strike 3 was able to show what appear to be 47 IP addresses linked to Meta participating in torrenting of the company's material. But Meta doesn't seem to think much of the accusation. In its motion to dismiss, the company calls Strike 3's torrent tracking "guesswork and innuendo," and basically argues that, among other reasons, there simply isn't even enough data here to be worth using for AI model training. Instead, it's more likely just some gooners in the ranks. "The small number of downloadsâ€"roughly 22 per year on average across dozens of Meta IP addressesâ€"is plainly indicative of private personal use, not a concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training," the company argued. The company also denied building a porn generator model, basically stating that Strike 3 doesn't have any evidence of this and Meta's own terms of service prohibit its models from generating pornographic content. "These claims are bogus: We don't want this type of content, and we take deliberate steps to avoid training on this kind of material," a spokesperson for Meta told Gizmodo. As absurd as the case is, whether the accusations are right or wrong, there is one clear victim: the dad of a Meta contractor who is apparently simultaneously being accused by Strike 3 of being a conduit for copyright infringement and accused by Meta of being a degenerate: "[Strike 3] point to 97 additional downloads made using the home IP address of a Meta contractor’s father, but plead no facts plausibly tying Meta to those downloads, which are plainly indicative of personal consumption," Meta's motion said. God forbid this case move forward and this poor person has to answer for his proclivities reserved for incognito tabs.

Meta says porn downloads were for 'personal use,' not training AI

Meta has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit that claims the tech giant violated copyright laws by downloading thousands of adult films to use in AI training. The lawsuit was brought forth by adult film company Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media in July, stating that they had discovered nearly 3,000 instances of Meta downloading copyrighted videos using hidden IP addresses. The lawsuit alleged the downloads were then used to train Meta's Movie Gen, Llama, and other video-based AI models. Strike 3 asked for $359 million in damages and a permanent ban on Meta's use of its materials. Meta has now responded, arguing that the allegations by Strike 3 Holdings are "nonsensical and unsupported" -- an attempt to extort Meta by making erroneous copyright claims -- and that the company has no proof the videos were used to train AI. Insisting it was unaware of any illegal downloads, the company says that the torrenting began in 2018, before the company started researching multimodal models and generative video. The flagged videos, which were only intermittently accessed, therefore must have been downloaded for private consumption, Meta asserts, not to train its systems at large. In the motion, Meta argues Strike 3 failed to provide any evidence of its claims that individuals used hidden IP addresses to download material or that employees involved in Meta's AI project could be implicated. "The far more plausible inference to be drawn from such meager, uncoordinated activity is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use," wrote Meta. The company has requested that the court dismiss the lawsuit on such grounds. Meta has weathered several copyright-based lawsuits related to its AI systems in the past, including a joint lawsuit by noted authors whose works had been pirated to train the Llama model. It also recently overhauled its chatbot policies for teens, following an investigation that found chatbots had been allowed to engage in romantic and sensual conversations with young users and generate sexually suggestive images. "We don't want this type of content, and we take deliberate steps to avoid training on this kind of material," a Meta spokesperson told Ars Technica.

Meta Moves to Dismiss Porn-Piracy Suit, Calls AI-Training Claims 'Nonsensical' - Decrypt

The company denies using any adult content in its model, calling the AI-training theory "guesswork and innuendo." Meta has asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit that accused it of illegally downloading and distributing thousands of pornographic videos to train its artificial intelligence systems. Filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the motion to dismiss argues there is no evidence that Meta's AI models contain or were trained on the copyrighted material, calling the allegations "nonsensical and unsupported." The motion was first reported by Ars Technica on Thursday, with Meta issuing a direct denial saying the claims are "bogus." Plaintiffs have gone "to great lengths to stitch this narrative together with guesswork and innuendo, but their claims are neither cogent nor supported by well-pleaded facts," the motion reads. The original complaint was filed in July by Strike 3 Holdings and alleged Meta of using corporate and concealed IP addresses to torrent nearly 2,400 adult films since 2018 as part of a broader effort to build multimodal AI systems. Strike 3 Holdings is a Miami-based adult film holding company distributing content under brands such as Vixen, Blacked, and Tushy, among others. Decrypt has reached out to Meta and Strike 3 Holdings, as well as to their respective legal counsel, and will update this article should they respond. Meta's motion argues that the scale and pattern of alleged downloads contradict Strike 3's AI training theory. Over seven years, only 157 of Strike 3's films were allegedly downloaded using Meta's corporate IP addresses, averaging roughly 22 per year across 47 different addresses. Meta attorney Angela L. Dunning characterized this as "meager, uncoordinated activity" from "disparate individuals" doing it for "personal use," and thus was not, as Strike 3 alleges, part of an effort by the tech giant to gather data for AI training. The motion also pushes back on Strike 3's claim that Meta used more than 2,500 "hidden" third-party IP addresses, and claims Strike 3 did not verify who owned those addresses and instead made loose "correlations." One of the IP ranges is allegedly registered to a Hawaiian nonprofit with no link to Meta, while others have no identified owner. Meta also argues there's no proof it knew about or could have stopped the alleged downloads, adding that it gained nothing from them and that monitoring every file on its global network would be neither simple nor required by law. While Meta's defense appears "unusual" at first, it may still have weight given the core claim rests on how "the material was not used in any model training," Dermot McGrath, co-founder of venture capital firm Ryze Labs, told Decrypt. "If Meta admitted the data was used in models, they'd have to argue fair use, justify the inclusion of pirated content, and open themselves to discovery of their internal training and audit systems," McGrath said, add that instead of defending how the data was supposedly used, Meta denied "it was ever used at all." But if courts admit such a defense as valid, it could open "a massive loophole," McGrath said. It could "effectively undermine copyright protection for AI training data cases" such that future cases would need "stronger evidence of corporate direction, which companies would simply get better at hiding." Still, there are legitimate reasons to process explicit material, such as developing safety or moderation tools. "Most major AI companies have 'red teams' whose job is to probe models for weaknesses by using harmful prompts and trying to get the AI to generate explicit, dangerous, or prohibited content," McGrath said. "To build effective safety filters, you need to train those filters on examples of what you're trying to block."

Meta claims that thousands of pirated adult videos it was accused of using for AI training may have been downloaded by 'disparate individuals' for 'personal use'

(Image credit: Getty Images / Brian A. Jackson/South Florida Sun Sentinel) Usually, when adult videos are discovered on a device, the response is to claim some grander purpose for their existence. Well, Meta isn't one to bow to convention, apparently, as it has recently struck back at claims that adult videos were used to train its AI models, claiming that they may have been downloaded for 'personal use' instead. In July of this year, a company called Strike 3 Holdings filed a suit against Meta, alleging that Meta had pirated "at least" 2,396 adult videos for use in its AI training. The original suit [PDF warning] filing claims that Meta, through BitTorrent, downloaded "award-winning, critically acclaimed adult motion pictures", referred to as Works, to "train its Meta Movie Gen, Large Language Model ("LLaMA"), as well as various other Meta AI Models that rely on video training content." Meta filed a motion to dismiss (via Ars Technica) on October 27th, arguing these adult videos are "plainly indicative of private personal use, not a concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training." This same motion argues that the downloads go back to 2018, averaging around 22 per year, and weren't substantiated by Strike 3 to be relevant to its data set. It says the "Plaintiffs' supposition that Meta must have instigated these downloads for AI training is implausible on its face. All [the] Plaintiffs have are IP addresses, which is insufficient to state a claim." Meta also claims that "tens of thousands of employees and innumerable contractors, visitors, and third parties access the internet at Meta every day. While it is possible one or more Meta employees downloaded Plaintiffs' videos, it is just as possible...that a 'guest, or freeloader,' or contractor, or vendor, or repair person -- or any combination of such persons -- was responsible for that activity." Effectively, while Strike 3 may have Meta IP addresses logged, Meta believes it can't claim any more than that. "Plaintiffs simply have no idea who downloaded these Works, and do not plead facts plausibly showing that it was Meta." The document also argues that, despite seemingly having the ability to find the owner of an IP address, Strike 3 fails to do so, "or, if they did, chose not to share the results of their findings in the Complaint." Finishing off the motion to dismiss, Meta's lawyer says, "these claims fail not only for lack of supporting facts, but also because Plaintiffs' theory of liability makes no sense and cannot be reconciled with the facts they do plead. The entire complaint against Meta should be dismissed with prejudice." Finally, Meta argues that there's no evidence that Meta encouraged its employees or contractors to download any adult content for any reason. This case is complicated somewhat by the reputation around Strike 3, the plaintiff. Just a few months ago, copyright lawyer and YouTuber Leonard French called Strike 3 "the most litigious copyright troll" in regard to its lawsuit against Meta. According to Torrentfreak, Strike 3 has two weeks to respond to the motion, in which Meta may be allowed a follow-up response. Then, the motion will go forward to deliberation in the California federal court.

Meta Rejects Claims Using Pirated Porn in AI Training, Says Downloads Were for Personal Use

Meta Refutes Claims of Pirated Porn Use in AI Training and Model Refining as Allegations Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has been embroiled in another AI controversy. The lawsuit claims that the tech giant has used pirated adult films to train its AI models, which has led to a widespread debate among the tech community worldwide. It is still not clear to what extent these allegations about "pirated porn for AI" are factual. However, the matter has turned the debate upside down and made both critics and experts in the field ask: how much will the AI companies stretch their limits to satisfy their insatiable algorithms?

Meta Defends 2,400 Adult Videos Download Allegation; Says Content Wasn't Used to Train AI

Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media, the makers of popular adult entertainment brands such as Vixen, Tushy, Blacked, and Deeper, alleged that Meta downloaded at least 2,369 of their movies since 2018 to train its AI, according to TorrentFreak reports. The company checked its BitTorrent-tracking tools designed to detect copyright infringement of its videos. This revealed several corporate IP addresses identified as owned by Meta. It has further been alleged that "Meta concealed a stealth network of 2,500 hidden IP addresses." The claimed that Meta secretly trained an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen. Strike 3 asked for $359 million in damages and a permanent ban on Meta's use of its materials.