Just when you thought the conversation around generative AI couldn't get more alarming for filmmakers and content creators, The Atlantic drops another bombshell. They have exposed the unconsented scraping of nearly 16 million YouTube videos to train the next generation of generative AI.And the companies behind the scraping are not like upstarts; they're huge corporations using the stuff you put on YouTube to train the programs they want to replace you. Let's dive in.An Unprecedented HeistThe investigation, part of The Atlantic's new AI Watchdog subsite, reveals that over 15.8 million videos from more than 2 million YouTube channels were downloaded without permission. You can use their searchable database to see which videos are being used to train generative-AI models, and which tech companies are using that material.I searched and found a few No Film School videos on there, so that's fun. Of course, this kind of stuff is against YouTube's terms of service, but AI companies are finding other ways around that, via third-party apps and other workarounds. Not all YouTube videos are copyrighted, but many of the videos found in the Atlantic's exposé were. Here's a part of the article that stood out to me: "Many major tech companies have used these data sets to train AI, according to research papers I’ve read and AI developers I’ve spoken with. The group includes Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, Runway, ByteDance, Snap, and Tencent. I reached out to each of these companies to ask about their use of these data sets. Only...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Today