Overview
- Three channels behind h3h3Productions, MrShortGameGolf, and Golfholics filed a proposed class action on April 3 in Northern California, alleging Apple scraped millions of YouTube videos to train its AI in violation of the DMCA.
- The complaint says Apple evaded YouTube’s download protections with automated tools and rotating IP addresses to pull full video files at scale for an internal system called Apple AI Video.
- Plaintiffs cite Apple’s 2024 STIV research paper and a dataset called Panda‑70M, described as an index of YouTube clip URLs and timestamps that points back to full videos on the platform.
- The filing claims their content appears in that collection more than 500 times, including 438 instances for Ted Entertainment, 62 for Golfholics, and 8 for MrShortGameGolf, and it seeks an injunction, class certification, and maximum statutory damages.
- The case remains at the complaint stage with no substantive public response from Apple in the coverage, and it joins similar creator suits against Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance, and Snap over how AI models source training data.