Unsurprisingly, Runway has not released an official statement on the matter, and according to the report's author, Samantha Cole, the company ignored multiple requests for comment.
As it stands, the exposed spreadsheet appears to be one of two things: either it's long-awaited real-world evidence shedding light on the shady practices AI developers employ to get an edge over their competitors, or it's an elaborate hoax that would have required compiling thousands of YouTube channels and tags, plus knowing the names of multiple Runway employees who worked on Gen-3. Given what we already know about AI training methods, which is more likely is a rhetorical question.
Interestingly, this isn't the first time YouTube has been identified as a goldmine for AI makers in recent weeks. Previously, Proof News published a detailed investigative report revealing that several Silicon Valley giants, including NVIDIA, Apple, Salesforce, and Anthropic, had used content from thousands of YouTube videos to train AI models, completely ignoring YouTube's rules against harvesting material from the platform without permission.
