Outdated Drivers Are Slowing You Down
One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchPC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11A July 2024 investigation linked Apple, NVIDIA and Anthropic research to an AI-training dataset that included subtitles from 173,536 YouTube videos. The key distinction: the evidence points to downstream use of EleutherAI’s Pile dataset, not proof that each company independently scraped YouTube. And Apple said the research model tied to the dataset did not power Apple Intelligence.
What the investigation actually found
On July 16, 2024, Proof News and Wired reported that a publicly available collection called YouTube Subtitles contained text subtitles from 173,536 videos across more than 48,000 YouTube channels. The collection was included in EleutherAI’s larger text dataset, the Pile. The material included subtitles and, in some cases, translations into languages such as Japanese, German and Arabic. It was not established as an archive of complete video files, images or audio recordings. Proof News’ searchable dataset and methodology describes how the videos were identified.
The reported data path is important: YouTube videos generated subtitles; those subtitles were assembled into YouTube Subtitles; the subset was included in the Pile; and research papers or company statements linked various models to the Pile. That chain does not show that each downstream company personally collected the material from YouTube, knew which particular videos were included, or used every part of the dataset in the same way.
Which companies were linked to the Pile?
The investigation found different kinds of evidence for different organizations. A paper documenting a dataset’s use is not the same as a direct company confirmation, and research use does not automatically establish use in a consumer product.
#1 Best Overall
- AN AMAZING MAC AT A SURPRISING PRICE — With an incredibly portable and durable aluminum design, up to 16 hours of battery life,* and the A18 Pro chip, MacBook Neo is ready to go wherever school takes you.
- FOUR STUNNING COLORS. ONE DURABLE DESIGN — Choose from four beautiful colors — Silver, Blush, Citrus, or Indigo — each with a color-coordinated keyboard. And MacBook Neo is made with a durable recycled aluminum enclosure that helps it reach 60 percent recycled content by weight — the most ever in any Apple product.*
- FLY THROUGH EVERYDAY ASSIGNMENTS — Whether you’re cramming for finals, using Apple Intelligence* to summarize class notes, creating presentations, or even playing the latest Apple Arcade game,* MacBook Neo delivers the performance and AI capabilities you need to get things done.
- UP TO 16 HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE — MacBook Neo delivers all day battery life, so you can power through from early morning classes to late night study sessions without worrying about plugging in.
- A VIBRANT 13-INCH DISPLAY* — The gorgeous Liquid Retina display on MacBook Neo supports 1 billion colors, so photos and videos pop and text is crisp for easy reading.
| Company | What the reporting established | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | Apple research documents showed that its OpenELM model used the Pile. | Apple said OpenELM did not power Apple Intelligence or consumer-facing AI and machine-learning features on its devices. |
| Anthropic | Anthropic confirmed that the Pile was used in training Claude. | Anthropic argued that YouTube’s terms address direct use of YouTube and disputed that downstream Pile use necessarily violated those terms. |
| NVIDIA | Research documentation linked NVIDIA models to the Pile. | NVIDIA declined to comment to Proof News; the reporting is not a direct company admission. |
| Salesforce | Salesforce confirmed Pile use for an academic or research model. | It described the dataset as publicly available. Its research documentation also noted profanity and bias in the Pile. |
| Bloomberg and Databricks | Publications indicated use of the Pile. | The investigation reported that some representatives did not respond to requests for comment. |
The core investigation and company responses are detailed in Proof News’ report. The evidence should not be flattened into a claim that all of these companies took the same action or made the same admission.
OpenELM is not Apple Intelligence
Apple’s connection in the reporting was through OpenELM, a research model whose documentation listed the Pile as training data. Apple subsequently clarified that OpenELM did not power Apple Intelligence or other consumer-facing AI and machine-learning features on Apple devices. The investigation therefore supports a claim about Apple research and its documented training data; it does not establish that Apple Intelligence itself was trained on the YouTube subtitle subset. Ars Technica’s coverage reported the product distinction and related company responses.
Rank #2
- AN AMAZING MAC AT A SURPRISING PRICE — With an incredibly portable and durable aluminum design, up to 16 hours of battery life,* and the A18 Pro chip, MacBook Neo is ready to go wherever school takes you.
- FOUR STUNNING COLORS. ONE DURABLE DESIGN — Choose from four beautiful colors — Silver, Blush, Citrus, or Indigo — each with a color-coordinated keyboard. And MacBook Neo is made with a durable recycled aluminum enclosure that helps it reach 60 percent recycled content by weight — the most ever in any Apple product.*
- FLY THROUGH EVERYDAY ASSIGNMENTS — Whether you’re cramming for finals, using Apple Intelligence* to summarize class notes, creating presentations, or even playing the latest Apple Arcade game,* MacBook Neo delivers the performance and AI capabilities you need to get things done.
- UP TO 16 HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE — MacBook Neo delivers all day battery life, so you can power through from early morning classes to late night study sessions without worrying about plugging in.
- A VIBRANT 13-INCH DISPLAY* — The gorgeous Liquid Retina display on MacBook Neo supports 1 billion colors, so photos and videos pop and text is crisp for easy reading.
Why “YouTube videos” needs a qualification
The implicated dataset was primarily subtitle text. The reporting did not establish that the named companies trained the cited models on complete YouTube video files, video imagery or audio tracks. Subtitles are still meaningful source material: they can reproduce a creator’s explanations, jokes, narration and other original wording. But copying or training on text raises different factual and legal questions from downloading a video or extracting its audio.
Proof News said it identified videos by extracting IDs from the dataset and querying YouTube’s publicly accessible developer tool for metadata such as titles and channels. It also warned that the lookup could produce false negatives. A video not appearing in a search result is therefore not proof that it was absent from the dataset.
Recommended Free Tools
Rank #3
- BUILT FOR COLLEGE. AND BEYOND — MacBook Air with the M5 chip packs blazing speed and powerful AI capabilities into an incredibly portable design. And with up to 18 hours of battery life,* this thin and light powerhouse is ready to take on almost any major, just about anywhere.
- TEAR THROUGH TOUGH ASSIGNMENTS — With its faster CPU and unified memory, the M5 chip delivers even more performance and fluidity across apps, making multitasking and creative workflows smooth and responsive. A powerful Neural Engine and next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerators give you a powerful platform for AI.
- MAKE QUICK WORK OF YOUR TO-DO LIST — Apple Intelligence helps you write, express yourself, and get things done effortlessly — whether it’s for school or everyday life. With groundbreaking privacy protections, it gives you peace of mind that no one else can access your data — not even Apple.*
- UP TO 18 HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE — MacBook Air delivers incredible battery life with amazing performance, so you can power through a full day of classes without worrying about plugging in.
- A BRILLIANT 13.6-INCH DISPLAY* — The gorgeous Liquid Retina display on MacBook Air supports 1 billion colors, making photos and videos pop with rich contrast and sharp detail, and text appears supercrisp. So everything — from class presentations to movies to games — looks truly stunning.
What creators can and cannot conclude
A match in a training corpus can establish that a video’s subtitle text appeared in a dataset. It does not, by itself, establish which named model used that exact item, how much influence it had during training, or whether a model can reproduce it. Nor does the match prove that any particular consumer-facing product was trained on the material.
- The reported 173,536 figure is a count of videos, not creators; a channel can contribute multiple videos.
- Because the Pile was publicly distributed, a later change or removal of a YouTube video would not necessarily remove a copy already present in an existing dataset distribution. This is a practical implication of dataset distribution, not a specific finding about any company’s current files.
- The reporting describes creators who generally did not know their work was included and did not give individual consent. That is distinct from a court ruling on whether the compilation or downstream training was unlawful.
What remains legally unresolved
“Publicly available” describes access, not necessarily ownership or permission to reuse. The Pile combined multiple text sources, including Wikipedia, European Parliament material and the Enron email corpus. Its availability online does not automatically make every included work public-domain or unrestricted. The questions also differ by stage: how subtitles were obtained, how they were compiled and distributed, and how a downstream researcher used them.
Rank #4
- SUPERCHARGED BY M5 — The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 brings next-generation speed and powerful on-device AI to personal, professional, and creative tasks. Featuring all-day battery life and a breathtaking Liquid Retina XDR display with up to 1600 nits peak brightness, it’s pro in every way.*
- HAPPILY EVER FASTER — Along with its faster CPU and unified memory, M5 features a more powerful GPU with a Neural Accelerator built into each core, delivering faster AI performance. So you can blaze through demanding workloads at mind-bending speeds.
- BUILT FOR APPLE INTELLIGENCE — Apple Intelligence is the personal intelligence system that helps you write, express yourself, and get things done effortlessly. With groundbreaking privacy protections, it gives you peace of mind that no one else can access your data — not even Apple.*
- ALL-DAY BATTERY LIFE — MacBook Pro delivers the same exceptional performance whether it’s running on battery or plugged in.
- APPS FLY WITH APPLE SILICON — All your favorites, including Microsoft 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud, run lightning fast in macOS.*
- Copyright: Whether copying subtitle text or using it for training is licensed, infringing, fair use or otherwise lawful depends on the facts, jurisdiction and legal interpretation. The investigation did not establish a final court determination.
- YouTube terms: Proof News reported that YouTube’s rules restrict harvesting material without permission. EleutherAI’s founder said subtitles were obtained with a script and YouTube’s API, as reported by Ars Technica. Anthropic’s position was that platform terms about direct YouTube use do not necessarily resolve a downstream user’s use of the Pile.
- Provenance and responsibility: A company can use a third-party collection without itself gathering each underlying item, but that does not answer separate questions about licensing, provenance, privacy or responsibility for downstream use.
- Model behavior: Inclusion in a corpus is not proof that a model memorized a particular transcript or will reproduce it.
Proof News and affected creators characterized the use as occurring without permission or knowledge. Those descriptions convey the reported consent concerns; they are not, by themselves, a final legal judgment that every dataset or model use violated copyright law or YouTube’s terms.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What is documented—and what is not
| Documented or strongly supported by the reporting | Not established by the investigation |
|---|---|
| The YouTube Subtitles dataset contained subtitles from 173,536 videos across more than 48,000 channels. | That every named company directly scraped YouTube or harvested the videos itself. |
| The subtitle collection was included in the Pile. | That Apple Intelligence was trained on the identified material. |
| Company papers or statements linked several research models to the Pile, with evidence differing by company. | That a particular creator’s transcript changed a specific model output. |
| The reporting described creators who generally lacked knowledge of or individual consent for inclusion. | That a court definitively found the collection or training to be illegal. |
| The identified material was subtitle text, sometimes with translations. | That complete video imagery or audio was used in training the cited models. |
The broader significance is about AI data supply chains: material can move from a platform into a third-party corpus and then into research models, making both consent and provenance difficult for creators to trace. Public access to a dataset, a documented training-data link and a legal right to use every item in it are separate questions.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsQuick Recap
Best Value
- AN AMAZING MAC AT A SURPRISING PRICE — With an incredibly portable and durable aluminum design, up to 16 hours of battery life,* and the A18 Pro chip, MacBook Neo is ready to go wherever school takes you.
- FOUR STUNNING COLORS. ONE DURABLE DESIGN — Choose from four beautiful colors — Silver, Blush, Citrus, or Indigo — each with a color-coordinated keyboard. And MacBook Neo is made with a durable recycled aluminum enclosure that helps it reach 60 percent recycled content by weight — the most ever in any Apple product.*
- FLY THROUGH EVERYDAY ASSIGNMENTS — Whether you’re cramming for finals, using Apple Intelligence* to summarize class notes, creating presentations, or even playing the latest Apple Arcade game,* MacBook Neo delivers the performance and AI capabilities you need to get things done.
- UP TO 16 HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE — MacBook Neo delivers all day battery life, so you can power through from early morning classes to late night study sessions without worrying about plugging in.
- A VIBRANT 13-INCH DISPLAY* — The gorgeous Liquid Retina display on MacBook Neo supports 1 billion colors, so photos and videos pop and text is crisp for easy reading.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
