More than 170,000 YouTube videos are part of a massive dataset that was used to train AI systems for some of the biggest technology companies, according to an investigation by Proof News and copublished with Wired. Apple, Anthropic, Nvidia, and Salesforce are among the tech firms that used the “YouTube Subtitles” data that was ripped from the video platform without permission.
You can use its search feature to see if your content — or your favorite YouTuber’s — appears in the dataset. The subtitles dataset is part of a larger collection of material from the nonprofit EleutherAI called The Pile. The open-source collection known as the Pile also contains datasets of books, Wikipedia articles, and more.