Creators behind three YouTube channels with about 6.2 million subscribers filed a proposed class action accusing Snap of using their videos to train artificial intelligence systems. The suit says Snap relied on HD-VILA-100M and other large video-language datasets intended for academic research, then used the material for commercial features such as Imagine Lens, which edits images from written prompts. The creators allege that the company bypassed YouTube's restrictions and licensing terms. They are seeking damages and an injunction. Snap declined to comment.

Video training absorbs a kind of labor that is easy to hide inside a dataset. A creator chooses a room, sets a camera, speaks with a practiced rhythm, edits pauses, and builds an audience that gives the recording commercial value. Once millions of clips become numbered examples, those decisions appear as raw material detached from a channel and a person. The resulting feature can imitate visual patterns without displaying the videos that taught it, which makes appropriation difficult to see at the moment of use. Copyright law must now follow an image through download, dataset, training run, and consumer filter. The lawsuit asks a court to reconstruct that route. Every step may be technical, but the disputed object remains a recorded performance that entered a commercial product without an agreed price.