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What is the story
Runway, a Google-backed AI startup, is accused of using pirated content and unauthorized YouTube videos to train its Gen-3 Alpha video generation tool.
This suspicion is 404 mediaIt was reportedly shared by a former Runway employee.
The document outlines plans to categorize and tag content from more than 3,900 YouTube channels, including from major media companies such as Disney and Netflix, as well as popular creators such as Casey Neistat and Marques Brownlee (MKBHD).
Gen-3 Alpha Gains Attention Amid Controversy
Runway's Gen-3 Alpha video generation tool has garnered a lot of attention last month for its ability to generate nearly photorealistic clips.
The company said the tool was “trained on a combination of video and imagery,” but did not disclose the source of the data.
Despite not acknowledging the authenticity of the leaked spreadsheet, Runway has previously claimed that it uses a “curated internal dataset” for training.
but, 404 Media Using this tool, we have successfully created compelling videos for famous YouTube personalities.
Alleged use of proxies and large web crawlers
Runway reportedly went so far as to use proxies to cover its tracks in order to get around YouTube blocking it.
“The Spreadsheet channel was a company-wide effort to find good video to build models on,” said the anonymous former employee. 404 media.
“This was then used as input to a massive web crawler which downloaded every video from every channel, using proxies to circumvent Google's blocking,” the employee added.
Intellectual Property Concerns in AI Training
This is not the first time that AI companies have come under scrutiny for using copyrighted material without the necessary licenses.
Earlier this year, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said: The Wall Street Journal She said in an interview that she didn't know whether the training data for the company's upcoming Sora video generator would include videos from Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
The New York Times OpenAI was then reported to have circumvented company policies to circumvent copyright laws, using tools to transcribe YouTube videos to train its AI chatbots.
YouTube CEO warns of platform violations
YouTube CEO Neil Mohan has warned AI companies that using YouTube videos to train AI models is a “clear violation” of the platform's terms of service.
The issue of intellectual property infringement remains a major obstacle in the development of generative AI, especially for models that can generate entire videos.
Runway, which has a valuation of $1.5 billion, raised $141 million last year from investors including YouTube owner Google, NVIDIA and Salesforce.
