Apple just responsded to three YouTube channels that filed a lawsuit against the company earlier this year over AI training data — and Cupertino isn’t apologizing. In short, its defense is that these creators uploaded the videos online for free, so they shouldn’t be shocked that Apple looked at them.
Even if you haven’t uploaded a video in your life, here’s why you should care. This lawsuit is about how AI features baked into your iPhone actually got smart, and whether the people who made it possible got anything for it.
The Apple AI lawsuit, explained
Back in April, three YouTube channels — heheProductions, MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics — filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple. They accuse Apple of illegally scraping millions of their videos to train its AI models.
The complaint leaned on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention rules. The YouTubers argued Apple snuck past YouTube’s anti-scraping mechanisms to grab video files it had no business with. The same channels also filed almost identical lawsuits against Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance and Snap.
Apple’s argument: There was no lock to pick
In a motion to dismiss filed on July 1 in the Northern District of California, Apple did not deny that it accessed the videos. Instead, the company argued that doing so wasn’t illegal because the videos were publicly accessible.
“No password. No payment. No lock. No key,” Apple’s lawyers wrote. They argued YouTube’s anti-scraping tools govern the use of a video, not access to it — and the DMCA provision the plaintiff is suing under only covers the latter.
It’s a sharp legal distinction, and a real one. Apple is essentially saying that streaming a public YouTube video isn’t a break-in, no matter how many videos are grabbed. The company is also asking the judge to toss the case entirely, and with prejudice. This would mean the plaintiffs would never get a do-over.
This isn’t Apple’s first time
This isn’t Apple’s first encounter with copyright infringement over AI, and it likely won’t be the last. It is also preparing to defend its App Store rules when the Supreme Court takes up Apple’s long legal fight with Epic Games. Then there’s the U.K. class-action lawsuit over iCloud pricing.
For almost all major tech companies racing to build smarter assistants, AI training data has become a legal minefield. Siri’s overhaul is also part of that race.
For now, whether Apple’s “it was public” argument holds up as a legal shield is up to Judge Richard Seeborg, who will hear arguments on August 6. If Apple wins the case, it could set a template that every AI company will lean on.
However, if Apple loses, we could see a very different conversation about what “publicly available” means online. And that could affect how all tech companies build AI tools.
Anurag Chawake is a tech-focused writer specializing in smartphones, apps and consumer technology. His interest in computers began during the Windows 98 era, eventually leading him to explore everything from operating systems to mobile devices and PC hardware. Anurag previously contributed to The Indian Express, covering Apple, Android, gaming and the broader technology landscape.
