Researchers Build AI Tool That Flags Telegram Piracy Channels
The study maps how Telegram's piracy ecosystem is deliberately structured to resist takedown requests, with interconnected channels, bots, and backup accounts, and the researchers' open-source Anti-RIP tool offers a way to detect it in real time.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Researchers at Louisiana State University and the University of Texas at Arlington published a study of video piracy on Telegram, analyzing 1057 channels and roughly 209,000 posts from December 2023 to January 2026. They identified 19,033 unique pirated titles and developed an AI tool called Anti-RIP that detected 802 piracy channels during a test period.
The study, described by its authors as the first large-scale examination of video piracy on Telegram, found that pirated posts appeared across 983 channels and accumulated more than 4.85 billion views. Toei, which holds rights to One Piece and Dragon Ball, was the most infringed company, accounting for 17 percent of all titles, followed by Netflix at 15 percent and Warner Bros. at 12.4 percent.
Researchers estimated the financial loss to content rights holders at about 17.49 billion dollars. They sent their findings to Telegram's abuse department and 17 major US rights holders. The team also released the Anti-RIP dataset as open source on GitHub.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.