A group of YouTubers suing the tech giants for ripping off their videos without permission to train artificial intelligence models has now added Snap to their list of defendants. The plaintiffs — Internet content creators behind a trio of YouTube channels with about 6.2 million collective subscribers — allege that Snap has trained AI systems on their video content for use in AI features such as the app’s “Imagine Lens,” which allows users to edit images using text messages.
The plaintiffs earlier filed similar lawsuits against Nvidia, Meta, and ByteDance on similar issues.
In the newly filed proposed class action suitfiled Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the YouTubers specifically allege Snap’s use of a large-scale data-in-video language known as HD-VILA-100Mand others designed for academic and research purposes only. In order to use these datasets for commercial purposes, the plaintiffs allege that Snap circumvented YouTube’s technology restrictions, terms of service and licensing restrictions, which prohibit commercial use.
The lawsuit seeks legal damages and a permanent injunction to stop the alleged copyright infringement in the future.
The premise itself is driven by the creators behind the h3h3 YouTube channel, with 5.52 million subscribers, and the smaller golf channels MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics.
It is now one of several lawsuits pitting content creators against AI model providers, which include copyright disputes from publishers, authors, newspapers, user-generated content sites, artists and more. It is also not the first case I come from a YouTubers. According to the nonprofit organization Copyright Alliance, more than 70 cases of copyright infringement have been filed against AI companies.
In some cases, such as one between Meta and a group of writers, a judge has ruled in favor of the tech giant. In others, such as the case between Anthropic and a group of writers, the AI giant has settled and paid the plaintiffs to resolve their claims. Many cases are still pending in court.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
Snap has been approached for comment. TechCrunch will update if provided.
