YouTubers sue Snap for using videos to train AI models
Content creators with 6.2 million combined YouTube subscribers filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Snap in January 2026, alleging the company scraped their videos without permission to train AI systems including the Imagine Lens feature. The plaintiffs claim Snap used restricted datasets and circumvented YouTube's technological protections and terms of service to enable commercial use of their copyrighted content.
What happened
On January 23, 2026, content creators behind the h3h3 YouTube channel, MrShortGame Golf, and Golfholics filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Snap in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The plaintiffs, with 6.2 million combined subscribers, allege that Snap scraped their videos without permission to train AI models.
The suit claims Snap used restricted datasets including HD-VILA-100M and Panda-70M, and employed tools like yt-dlp downloaders with virtual machines to circumvent YouTube's technological protections, including streaming-only delivery, API limits, and bulk-download monitoring. The plaintiffs assert that h3h3 content alone contributed 146 clips to HD-VILA-100M and 155 to Panda-70M.
Reported impact
The plaintiffs allege Snap's actions powered commercial AI features including Imagine Lens and Easy Lens in Snapchat without consent or compensation to the content creators.
Index analysis
The suit alleges Snap circumvented YouTube's technological restrictions, terms of service, and licensing limitations to enable commercial use of datasets originally designed for non-commercial academic research. HD-VILA-100M was licensed solely for non-commercial academic purposes via GitHub, while Panda-70M was compiled by Snap in 2024 from millions of YouTube videos with AI-generated captions.
Governance controls
YouTube's terms explicitly ban scraping or downloading without permission, restrictions the plaintiffs say Snap violated. The complaint cites violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), which prohibit unauthorized bulk extraction of copyrighted material for commercial purposes.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.