Phones Canada has recently learned through a compelling investigation by Proof News that some of the world’s top AI companies, such as Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, and Salesforce, have been utilizing thousands of YouTube videos without permission to train their AI models. This discovery sheds light on a concerning breach of YouTube’s policies, which strictly forbid the unauthorized use of content from the platform.
Key points from the investigation include:
– Subtitles from 173,536 YouTube videos taken from over 48,000 channels were compiled into a dataset called YouTube Subtitles.
– This dataset was then leveraged by leading tech companies to enhance their AI capabilities.
– The harvested content included transcripts from reputable educational platforms like Khan Academy, MIT, and Harvard, as well as media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the BBC.
– Even popular entertainment shows like “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” were not exempt from being used in this process.
– Notable YouTube personalities like MrBeast, Marques Brownlee, Jacksepticeye, and PewDiePie also had their videos incorporated into the training data.
David Pakman from “The David Pakman Show” expressed his frustration upon discovering that around 160 of his videos were included in the YouTube Subtitles dataset. He emphasized that his content is his livelihood and argued that if AI companies benefit from using it, he should receive compensation.
Despite these significant revelations, representatives from the implicated companies have largely remained silent. Anthropic defended its use of the Pile dataset containing YouTube Subtitles for training its AI assistant Claude by stating that they adhere to public availability standards. Meanwhile, Nvidia chose not to comment on the matter, and Apple, Databricks, and Bloomberg did not respond to requests for clarification.
Phones Canada finds this investigation concerning and will continue to monitor developments in this story. Stay tuned for further updates on how these actions may impact the telecommunications industry.
