Meta: 2,400 porn downloads on corporate IPs for personal use, not training AI

Strike 3 Holdings is often in the news for suing downloaders of the pornographic movies it owns, and whoever there monitors IP addresses must have thought it was Christmas: a network of thousands of IP addresses that ultimately led to the corporate network of Meta, the parent company of Facebook. The subsequent lawsuit accuses the tech giant of using illegally-downloaded smut to train an as-yet unannounced porn-generating AI. Meta says someone was just having a wank: "disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use."

Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on "guesswork and innuendo," while writing that Strike 3 "has been labeled by some as a 'copyright troll' that files extortive lawsuits." Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there was no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3—or was even aware of the illegal activity. Strike 3 also cited "no facts to suggest that Meta has ever trained an AI model on adult images or video, much less intentionally so," Meta argued. "These claims are bogus," Meta's spokesperson told Ars.

The key detail in Meta's favor is the downloads spanned seven years and date back into the 2010s, years before Meta was working on AI, let alone reaching the bubble panic stage of developing pornography services such as those recently announced by OpenAI. Meta has no similar plans, it says.

But here's an interesting remark from Meta's lawyers.

"Monitoring every file downloaded by any person using Meta's global network would be an extraordinarily complex and invasive undertaking."

Consider what Facebook, an advertising company, does to every user. Then ask yourself if it's credible for Meta to claim it refrains from tracking what its own workers are doing with their work machines because that would be "invasive."

Previously:
• Zuckerberg personally and repeatedly thwarted efforts by Meta's management to address teen mental health dangers
• Nick Clegg identified as Facebook executive accused of accepting bribe from OnlyFans to blacklist rival adult entertainers
• A mysterious nonprofit made millions suing companies to put California cancer warnings on coffee