Roblox Admits Researcher's Bot Scraped 145GB of 3D Models from Open3DLab, Denies AI Training Use
Gaming and AI platform Roblox confirmed that a bot developed by one of its researchers unauthorizedly downloaded 145GB of 3D model data (including adult content) from community sites like Open3DLab, but stated the data was never used to train any AI models. This incident highlights compliance risks in AI training data acquisition and platform governance disputes.
US gaming and creation platform Roblox responded on October 27, 2026, to accusations, admitting that a web crawler built by one of its researchers mistakenly scraped data from free 3D asset websites Open3DLab and its sister sites SFMLab and SmutBase between October 15 and 16. According to disclosures by Open3DLab operators, the crawler made approximately 26,000 requests over 34 hours, downloading 1,027 files across 712 projects, totaling 145.5GB, including 62.6GB of adult content.
A Roblox spokesperson told Fathom News that the agent was intended to collect publicly available 3D assets but failed to operate as designed. The company stated the agent has been decommissioned and "the data was not used for any purpose, including training any AI models." However, this claim is self-reported by the company, and there is no independent evidence confirming the data has been completely deleted or that no derivative works were produced.
The dispute centers on data usage and copyright compliance. Open3DLab noted that 423 of the scraped projects carried non-commercial-only licenses, and the crawler ignored robots.txt protocols and terms of service. Since Roblox is developing a generative 3D AI model named "Cube," and the crawler's user-agent string "trellis2-data-sourcing/1.0" points to Microsoft's open-source TRELLIS.2 project, speculation arises that the batch may have been used for training or testing AI models.
This event occurs against a backdrop of multiple regulatory pressures on Roblox. The European Commission designated Roblox as a "very large online platform" in August, requiring systemic risk assessments; simultaneously, Roblox faces child safety lawsuits in several US states, while more than one-third of its daily active users are under 13 years old. The scraping of adult content further intensifies public questioning of its data governance and ethical boundaries.