Why Would Meta Download So Much Porn?

A mid tech companies' ongoing efforts to vacuum up as much data as possible to train AI models, Meta has taken public posts from its own platforms, scraped massive amounts of content from the rest of the internet, and pirated millions of books to train its AI models. Now the company is being accused of downloading much more illicit material: huge volumes of porn, nonconsensual celebrity nudes, blueprints for 3-D-printable handguns, and millions of passwords acquired by hackers. But in its efforts to collect evidence about these purported downloads, Strike 3 also captured information relating to many other files that Meta may have acquired over the course of two years: They include images from "Celebgate," a 2014 hack that resulted in the leak of private photos belonging to Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, and others, plus several collections of deepfake celebrity porn featuring the faces of Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Gal Gadot, and others. Strike 3's file-transfer lists include ordinary movies and TV shows, alongside dozens of videos from GirlsDoPorn, which was shut down after six people associated with the site were charged with sex trafficking . Strike 3 also presents evidence that Meta made some content publicly available in addition to downloading it.