Meta Discloses Employee Links to Pirated Video in AI Copyright Lawsuit

Meta internal searches have revealed that company employees interacted with pirated adult videos that form the center of a federal copyright lawsuit over artificial intelligence training data.

Adult entertainment producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed suit against Meta last year, alleging the social media and technology giant downloaded thousands of their copyrighted films via BitTorrent networks to train its machine learning systems. Meta has contested the allegations, suggesting from the outset that any network activity may have been personal downloads by employees or visitors rather than systematic data harvesting.

That defense is now playing out in the discovery phase. As reported by TorrentFreak, a joint status report initially submitted on October 21 with heavy redactions was subsequently refiled with fewer redactions, revealing Meta's internal findings regarding staff activity.

According to the filings, Meta initially provided the names of five workers who interacted with the torrented videos during an exchange in July. Meta quickly retracted that disclosure, stating the transmission was an inadvertent draft. The tech company later resubmitted the five identities, but placed them under an "Attorney's Eyes Only" designation.

Strike 3 objected to that classification, arguing in the court filing that the restriction impedes its legal team from fully investigating the named individuals. Meta has also informed the plaintiffs that additional personnel interacted with the relevant torrent files, though those identities have not yet been turned over.

Meta continues to maintain that it has found no evidence indicating the copyrighted videos were downloaded or utilized to train its proprietary AI models.

For Hollywood Tomorrow, the clash highlights the steep evidentiary challenges studios and content owners face when attempting to prove unauthorized data ingestion. As generative AI lawsuits proliferate across entertainment, distinguishing between illicit corporate data scraping and unauthorized personal use by staff on corporate networks is becoming a critical legal battleground.