Meta Allegedly Used Torrenting of Adult Content to Further Its AI ‘Superintelligence’ Ambitions

Strike 3 Holdings, a firm that claims to produce “high quality,” “feminist,” and “ethical” adult films, has filed a lawsuit against Meta in a California federal court for allegedly infringing its copyrighted content and utilizing it to train AI models. The complaint, submitted in July, argues that Meta has been torrenting and disseminating Strike 3’s videos since 2018. Related exhibits and additional details were made public last week.

Strike 3 contends that Meta aims to acquire its content to procure challenging visual angles, aspects of the human form, and lengthy, uninterrupted scenes—elements that are uncommon in mainstream films and television—helping to build what Mark Zuckerberg terms AI “superintelligence.”

“They are interested in our content because it can provide them with a competitive edge regarding the quality, fluidity, and human touch of the AI,” claims Christian Waugh, an attorney representing Strike 3.

The lawsuit further asserts that Meta used BitTorrent to illegally distribute 2,396 of Strike 3’s copyright-protected pornographic videos, meaning they allegedly employed the BitTorrent protocol to download and share large files, which is unlawful if those files are copyrighted. This method reportedly made Strike 3’s videos accessible to minors, as BitTorrent does not enforce age verification. Meta purportedly employed and continues to utilize Strike 3’s adult content “as currency to support the downloading of a wide array of other content necessary for training its AI models,” the complaint states.

The Exhibits list cites titles Meta allegedly sourced from various non-pornographic origins, including episodes of Yellowstone, Modern Family, The Bachelor, South Park, and Downton Abbey, among numerous mainstream television programs.

Additionally, it includes titles from other adult video producers that may feature very young actors, such as: ExploitedTeens, Anal Teens, Asian Teen Masturbation, CasualTeenSex, and EuroTeenErotica. The list also mentions titles related to firearms, such as: 3D Gun Print and Gun Digest Shooter’s Guide to the AR-15. It further incorporates materials titled Antifa’s Radical Plan and, somewhat ironically, Intellectual Property Rights in Cyberspace.

Leveraging adult content as training data is “a public relations catastrophe in the making,” remarks Matthew Sag, a law professor specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science at Emory University. He posits a scenario where a middle school student solicits a Meta AI model for a video about pizza delivery, and suddenly it leads to explicit content.

According to the lawsuit, Strike 3 has “developed, owns, and operates” infringement detection technologies that enabled it to identify Meta’s alleged breaches, which it claims occurred through 47 distinct Meta-associated IP addresses. Citing statutory infringement penalties, the company is seeking $350 million.

Christopher Sgro, a spokesperson for Meta, informed WIRED: “We are reviewing the complaint, but we believe Strike’s allegations are inaccurate.”

Meta researchers have stated that its V-JEPA 2 “world model,” unveiled in June, was trained on one million hours of “internet video”—a term that Strike 3’s complaint highlights as unspecified. The company’s AI objectives are both ambitious and deeply personal: Zuckerberg has publicly remarked that Meta plans to place “the power of superintelligence into people’s hands to guide it towards what they value in their daily lives.” For instance, Meta’s signature smart glasses aim to provide users with “personal superintelligence,” as reiterated by Zuckerberg during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday.