Meta Accused of Torrenting Porn to Advance Its Goal of AI ‘Superintelligence’

Strike 3 Holdings, a company that says it makes “high quality,” “feminist,” and “ethical” adult videos, is suing Meta in a federal court in California for allegedly infringing its copyright-protected content and using it to train AI models. The complaint, filed in July, alleges Meta has been torrenting and seeding Strike 3’s videos since 2018. Associated exhibits and details of the complaint were unsealed last week.

Strike 3 alleges Meta’s motive was partly to obtain otherwise difficult to scrape visual angles, parts of the human body, and extended, uninterrupted scenes—rare in mainstream movies and TV—to help it create what Mark Zuckerberg calls AI “superintelligence.”

“They have an interest in getting our content because it can give them a competitive advantage for the quality, fluidity, and humanity of the AI,” alleges Christian Waugh, an attorney for Strike 3.

The complaint also claims Meta BitTorrented and distributed 2,396 of Strike 3’s copyright-protected porn videos, meaning it allegedly used the BitTorrent protocol to download and distribute large files, which is illegal if the downloaded files are copyrighted. This process made Strike 3’s porn videos accessible to minors, the complaint alleges, since BitTorrent does not have age verification. Meta used and continues to use Strike 3’s porn “for distribution as currency to support its downloading of a vast array of other content necessary to train its AI models,” the complaint alleges.

The Exhibits list includes titles Meta allegedly took from a variety of non-pornographic sources, such as episodes of Yellowstone, Modern Family, The Bachelor, South Park, and Downton Abbey, among other mainstream television shows.

But they also list titles of non-Strike 3 porn videos that may include very young actors, such as: ExploitedTeens, Anal Teens, Asian Teen Masturbation, CasualTeenSex, and EuroTeenErotica. The list includes titles relating to weapons, such as: 3D Gun Print and Gun Digest Shooter’s Guide to the AR-15. It also features materials called Antifa’s Radical Plan and, ironically, Intellectual Property Rights in Cyberspace.

Using adult content as training data is “a public relations disaster waiting to happen,” says Matthew Sag, professor of law in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science at Emory University. Imagine a middle school student asks a Meta AI model for a video about pizza delivery, he says, and before you know it, it’s porn.

Per the lawsuit, Strike 3 has “developed, owns, and operates” infringement detection systems that allowed it to identify Meta’s alleged violations, which it says took place via 47 distinct Meta-affiliated IP addresses. Based on statutory infringement penalties, the company is demanding $350 million.

Christopher Sgro, a Meta spokesperson, told WIRED: “We’re reviewing the complaint, but we don’t believe Strike’s claims are accurate.”

According to Meta researchers, its V-JEPA 2 “world model,” released in June, was trained on one million hours of “internet video”—a term Strike 3’s complaint points out is left unspecified. The company’s AI ambitions are both grand and rooted in the personal: Zuckerberg has said publicly Meta plans to put “the power of superintelligence into people’s hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives.” Meta’s signature smart glasses, for example, are designed to give users “personal superintelligence,” Zuckerberg reiterated at the Meta Connect event on Wednesday.