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Roblox accused of downloading 145GB of 3D assets, including adult content, for AI training purposes during scraping spree — 1,000 files scraped by automated crawler that ignored Open3DLab's site rules Another crawler vacuuming up the internet for undisclosed reasons Independent 3D modeling community Open3DLab has publicly warned that a web crawler, linked to the gaming platform Roblox, mapped "almost every project" on its website, along with sister sites SFMLab and SmutBase, downloading 145.5GB of data in the process. In a blog post, Open3DLab reports that "complete copies" of 1,027 files from 712 projects were sourced in the process, which it believes were taken for "AI training purposes." The blog post goes into the specifics of the incident, along with some changes that Open3DLab has made since to try and avoid a repeat. According to the post, Open3DLab's staff noticed a crawler "making a large number of requests to our sites and download infrastructure" on October 18. The crawler used trellis2-data-sourcing/1.0 (3D foundation model research; [redacted]@roblox.com) as its user agent, with the data coming from a single Amazon AWS address. The crawler didn't respect the site's robots.txt file or Terms of Service, which explicitly forbid scraping. It also, according to the report, ignored creator licenses for the projects, which prohibit non-commercial use. The crawler read "practically [its] entire catalogue" of 18,926 projects in a span of 34 hours over a total of 26,429 requests. Once it was done, the crawler downloaded 1,027 files from 712 projects before it "suspended operations." Files downloaded include 364 files, or 54.8GB worth, from 224 projects hosted on SmutBase, OpenLab's sister site focused on adult content. A further 345 projects of adult-marked SFMLab projects, or 62.6GB worth, were also taken. According to Open3DLab, the crawler's "main limiting factor" was its use of free download servers that capped speed and concurrent downloads. The scraping was detected on the same day, and blocked by the following morning. Further download attempts were detected on October 19, "neatly within office hours, only briefly pausing for an hour around lunchtime," and despite being blocked, "did not reduce its download attempts." A final attempt on October 20, with requests tapering, "likely in an effort to test... rate limiting," was made, with requests stopping completely later that day. Open3DLab made another request at this point for comment, although without reply. The Roblox user agent mentions "3D foundation model research." As Open3DLab's blog post notes, Roblox has been building such a model since March 2025, when it introduced Roblox Cube, its "core generative AI system" for 3D modeling for character rigging, with characters and avatars listed as future goals. Further AI tech that could build in-game models using natural language prompts, called "4D generation," was beta launched in February 2026. The email address listed in the user agent matches one of the researchers listed on the Roblox Cube research paper, according to Open3DLab, although it redacted the name here. Noting Roblox's "track record," Open3DLab's "most likely explanation" is that the crawler was collecting "training or evaluation data" for its 3D foundation model, although it notes that it can't prove it. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Roblox is a gaming platform and game creation system with over 33 million users and billions of "game experiences" for its player base, 40% of whom are reportedly aged under 12 years old. Open3DLab is clear to state that it "doesn't think Roblox set out to collect adult content" but that "as far as [its] logs show, nobody checked," which, it believes, is "not a good position" for Roblox to be in. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Ben Stockton is a deals writer at Tom’s Hardware. He's been writing about technology since 2018, with bylines at PCGamesN, How-To Geek, and Tom’s Guide, among others. When he’s not hunting down the best bargains, he’s busy tinkering with his homelab or watching old Star Trek episodes. - coolitic Saw the "sister websites" and immediately stopped caring. It is kind of funny/worrying how said content would be used, considering that Roblox is supposed to be a children's platform. Reply
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