AI Video Generator Runway Trained on Thousands of YouTube Videos Without Permission
Jul 31, 2024 - news.bensbites.com
Runway, a multi-billion dollar company, has been accused of secretly training its highly-praised AI video generation tool, Gen-3, by scraping thousands of videos from popular YouTube creators, brands, and pirated films. This information was revealed by 404 Media, who obtained an internal spreadsheet of the training data. Despite the acclaim Gen-3 received from the AI development community and technology outlets, Runway co-founder Anastasis Germanidis has been vague about the source of the training data.
Runway, which last year raised $141 million from investors including Google and Nvidia, and is valued at $1.5 billion, has been evasive about the origins of its training data. When asked by Techcrunch, Germanidis stated that an in-house research team oversees all training and that they use curated, internal datasets to train their models. However, he did not provide specific details.
Key takeaways:
Runway's AI video generation tool, Gen-3, was secretly trained by scraping thousands of videos from popular YouTube creators, brands, and pirated films.
Runway, valued at $1.5 billion, raised $141 million from investors including Google and Nvidia.
Runway's co-founder, Anastasis Germanidis, did not provide specifics when asked about the source of the training data for Gen-3.
The Gen-3 model received widespread praise from the AI development community and technology outlets upon its release.
