A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against artificial intelligence video startup Runway AI, accusing the company of illegally scraping YouTube videos to train its generative platform. The suit, filed in California federal court, marks the latest legal challenge against tech companies over the use of copyrighted material for AI development.
YouTube creator David Gardner filed the complaint in Los Angeles, alleging that Runway AI bypassed YouTube’s copyright protections to download user videos for its AI training purposes. Gardner claims that Runway’s actions violate YouTube’s terms of service and California’s unfair competition law. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.
This legal action against Runway AI is one of many copyright cases brought by creators, including authors and visual artists, against technology firms concerning AI training data. Similar ongoing lawsuits have been filed by other YouTubers against prominent companies such as OpenAI, Nvidia, Snap, Meta, and ByteDance.
Runway AI, based in New York, has achieved a valuation exceeding $5.3 billion following significant funding rounds from investors like SoftBank and Nvidia. The lawsuit asserts that Runway utilized data-scraping tools to unlawfully download YouTube videos, employing this content without authorization to teach its generative AI systems how to respond to user prompts.
Gardner is seeking court permission to represent a broader group of rights holders whose YouTube videos were allegedly scraped by Runway. As of Tuesday, spokespeople for Runway, Gardner and his attorneys, and YouTube’s parent company Google had not immediately responded to requests for comment on the complaint. Google is not directly involved in this particular case.