A group of YouTube creators has filed a lawsuit against Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, accusing the company of copyright infringement for using their videos without permission to train its AI models.
The complaint, filed January 26, 2026, in federal court, names creators including Ethan Klein of the h3h3 channel (5.52 million subscribers) and operators of two golf-related channels as plaintiffs. They allege Snap obtained their content through unauthorized scraping or third-party datasets originally intended for research and academic purposes, then used it to train generative AI features in Snapchat without licensing or compensation.
The suit claims Snap’s actions violate U.S. copyright law by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works from the plaintiffs’ protected videos. It seeks damages, an injunction to stop further use of the content, and potentially class-action status for other affected creators.
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Snap has not yet publicly responded to the lawsuit as of publication time. The company has faced similar scrutiny over its My AI chatbot and generative tools, which rely on large-scale training data.
This case joins a growing wave of creator-led lawsuits against tech firms over AI training practices, following actions against companies like OpenAI, Stability AI, and Meta. Legal experts say outcomes could set precedents for how platforms handle copyrighted material in AI development, especially when datasets include publicly available but protected content.
The complaint highlights concerns that AI companies often rely on “research-use-only” datasets that prohibit commercial applications, potentially breaching terms and enabling infringement at scale.
No trial date has been set, and Snap could seek dismissal on fair use grounds or argue the training process qualifies as transformative. The case is ongoing in the U.S. District Court.
