News Summary:
On March 18, 2026, new lawsuits accused major AI developers, including Runway AI, of using copyrighted content to train their models, with specific claims that Runway bypassed YouTube’s download protections to gather training data for its generative systems. Previously, on March 12, the company launched Runway Characters, a real-time video agent API built on its World Model GWM-1, designed to enable fully custom conversational characters from a single image. This followed news from March 11 that Trusted Media Brands built its streaming show, "The Animal Breakdown," with Runway, featuring a distinct visual style of classic textbook illustrations with vibrant colors. Earlier on March 11, a class action lawsuit was filed against Runway AI, alongside Stability AI, Midjourney, and Google, for copyright infringement, alleging the use of copyrighted human intelligence to train image generators resulted in the reproduction of copyrighted images and artistic styles. Runway initially introduced Runway Characters on March 9, an API allowing users to build custom conversational video agents with comprehensive control over appearance, style, voice, personality, knowledge, and actions.
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