YouTuber files lawsuit against Nvidia over AI scraping leak

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Nvidia after it leaked that the company was scraping YouTube videos to train its Cosmos AI project.

In early August 2024, a report from 404Media revealed that Nvidia had scraped YouTube videos to train its Cosmos AI project without the creator’s permission.

Emails reportedly viewed by the publication claimed that the company was going through 80 years’ worth of videos each day. This included content from tech YouTuber MKBHD, travel channel Expedia, and hundreds more.

On August 14, 2024, one of the affected YouTubers, David Millette, filed a class action lawsuit against Nvidia over the unauthorized use of his videos. He’s also seeking restitution and other damages that exceed $5,000,000.

“The unfair business practices described herein violate the UCL because they are unfair, immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, or injurious to consumers, and because Defendant used Plaintiff’s videos to train its Cosmos AI program for Defendant’s own commercial profit without the authorization of Plaintiff or the Class,” reads the complaint.

“Defendant unfairly profits from, and takes credit for, developing commercial products based on unattributed reproductions of those stolen videos and ideas.”

404Media reached out to Nvidia after the lawsuit was filed and received a statement from the company’s spokesperson.

“We respect the rights of all content creators and are confident that we are working in full compliance with the letter and spirit of the law,” they said.

“Anyone is free to learn facts and ideas from publicly available sources. Creating new and transformative works is not only fair and just, but exactly what our legal system encourages.”

Nvidia’s not the only company that’s been accused of using YouTube videos to train its AI. Back in July, Apple was accused of “stealing” YouTube videos from MKBHD, MrBeast, and more to help boost its Apple Intelligence models.