Runway uses YouTube videos without consent for AI training

AI company Runway secretly used thousands of YouTube videos and pirated movies to train its AI models.

A spreadsheet obtained by 404 Media showed that Runway used content from The New Yorker, VICE News, Pixar, Disney, Netflix, Sony, and many other YouTube channels without acknowledgment or consent to train its Gen-3 series of AI models.

The sheet also includes links to channels and videos belonging to popular influencers and content creators, including Casey Neistat, Sam Kolder, Benjamin Hardman, Marques Brownlee.

The spreadsheet is titled 'Video sourcing - Jupiter'. Runway's Gen3 series of AI models - including its Gen-3 Alpha model - were initially codenamed Jupiter.

The findings contradict comments Runway co-founder Anastasis Germanidis had earlier made to TechCrunch that the company uses "curated, internal datasets to train our models.”