Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
NVIDIA’s Controversial Data Scraping Under Fire
AI Data | Aug 6, 2024
Image: Freepik/rawpixel.com
NVIDIA is facing copyright backlash over scraping huge amounts of video to train it's AI models
AI and tech giant NVIDIA is reportedly under fire for illegally stealing large amounts of video footage from Netflix and YouTube without authorization, according to 404 Media. Despite internal ethical and legal concerns, the practice was approved by the highest executives, to improve AI capabilities for a series of projects like the Omniverse 3D world-building tool. Employees were told to download large volumes of video content using virtual machines and programs like yt-dlp, an open-source YouTube downloader.
What Was Downloaded and Why?
Employees were specifically instructed to scrape a broad range of video content from sites like netflix and youtube, such as movies and academic dataset assets (example the HD-VG-130M from Peking University), which is meant for non-commercial research purposes. The sheer volume of data scraped intended to improve NVIDIA's AI capabilities was staggering, with NVIDIA reportedly downloading 80 years' worth of video content every day.
Such training data would be used to create models for well-known active projects, such as:
- Omniverse 3D World Generator --> A program for building intricate 3D worlds
- AI models for self-driving car systems --> For advancing autonomous driving technology
- 'Digital human' products to produce realistic computer avatars
Apparently, media 404 anonymously interviewed a former NVIDIA employee and received slack channel and other proof of the Cosmos video data capture project that revealed employees raised ethical and legal concerns but were often dismissed by management as 'executive decisions'.
See: Meta Seeks New Standards in Labeling AI-generated Content
In May 2024, a data strategy email was sent to project team members, announcing they had amassed 38.5 million video URLs. “As we measure against our desired distribution focus for the next week remains on cinematic, drone footage, egocentric, some travel and nature".
Image: NVIDIA Pie chart of video URLs scrapped by project Cosmos, 404 Media
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO replied, "Great update. Many companies have to build video FM [foundational models]. We can offer a fully accelerated pipeline.”
NVIDIAs public response to data scraping allegations:
“Our models and our research efforts are in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law. Copyright law protects particular expressions but not facts, ideas, data, or information. Anyone is free to learn facts, ideas, data, or information from another source and use it to make their own expressions. Fair use also protects the ability to use a work for a transformative purpose, such as model training.”
What Is Being Done About This Case?
The case has drawn a lot of criticism and attention from the legal community. Scraping video from YouTube and Netflix's platforms is obviously against their terms of service, according to both YouTube and Netflix. Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, has been particularly outspoken about this matter, claiming that utilizing YouTube video for AI training is a "clear violation" of their conditions.
See: Balancing AI Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights: Key Insights from the U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearing
A range of legal proposals are currently being evaluated to address the issue head on. Among these is the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act, which would require businesses to provide more information about the data sources they utilize for AI training.
Common Issue in AI Industry
Data scrapping is part of a larger problem in the AI industry, as companies such as OpenAI, Apple, Salesforce, and Anthropic are all under scrutiny for similar activities. The use of copyrighted data to train AI models is still a legal grey area, with continuing arguments and lawsuits attempting to define the boundaries of fair use in this context. Proposed legislation, such as the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act, proposes to set clearer standards and oblige corporations to disclose their data sources for AI training, but it will take time.
Outlook
If NVIDIA is proven to have broken copyright laws, it may be subject to severe legal consequences, including more stringent rules and obligations for transparency about AI training methods.
See: A Look Inside Canada’s AI Commercialization Challenge
This case highlights the urgency that clear legal frameworks are needed now to strike a balance between AI progress and intellectual property rights.
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