Moreover, this alleged activity cannot even be reliably linked to any Meta employee, Meta claims.
Strike 3 “does not identify any of the individuals who allegedly used these Meta IP addresses, does not allege that any of them were employed by Meta or played any role in AI training at Meta, and does not specify whether (and which) allegedly downloaded content was used to train any specific Meta model,” Meta wrote.
Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of employees” as well as “countless numbers of contractors, guests and third parties access the Internet on Meta every day,” Meta argued. So while “it is possible that one or more Meta employees” downloaded Strike 3 content in the last seven years, it is “equally likely” that a “visitor or freeloader,” a “contractor, seller, repairer – or any combination of such persons” was responsible for the activity, Meta claims.
Other alleged activities included the claim that Meta’s performer was instructed to download adult content at his father’s home, but that downloading also “clearly indicates personal consumption,” Meta argued. This contractor worked as an “automation engineer,” Meta noted, with no clear basis for explaining why he would be acquiring AI training data in that capacity. “No facts convincingly link Meta to these downloads,” Meta claims.
“The fact that torrenting allegedly ceased upon the expiration of his contract with Meta says nothing about whether the alleged torrenting occurred with Meta’s knowledge or under its direction,” Meta wrote.
Meta slams AI training theory as ‘nonsense’
But perhaps what’s most surprising to Meta in the Strike 3 complaint is the claim of a “hidden network” of hidden IP addresses. This poses “another puzzle” that Strike 3 “does not solve,” Meta claims, writing: “why would Meta ‘hide’ certain alleged downloads of plaintiffs’ and third-party content but use Meta’s easily traceable corporate IP addresses for many hundreds of others?”
“The obvious answer is that it wouldn’t happen,” Meta claims, slamming Strike 3’s “entire AI training theory” as “nonsensical and unfounded.”