Reddit stated forward of its IPO subsequent week that licensing person posts to Google and others for AI tasks might usher in $203 million of income over the subsequent few years. The community-driven platform was pressured to reveal Friday that US regulators have already got questions on that new line of enterprise.
In a regulatory submitting, Reddit stated that it acquired a letter from the US Federal Commerce Commision on Thursday asking about “our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content material with third events to coach AI fashions.”
The FTC, the US authorities’s major antitrust regulator, has the facility to sanction corporations discovered to interact in unfair or misleading commerce practices. The concept of licensing user-generated content material for AI tasks has drawn questions from lawmakers and rights teams about privateness dangers, equity, and copyright.
Reddit isn’t alone in attempting to make a buck off licensing information, together with that generated by customers, for AI. Programming Q&A web site Stack Overflow has signed a cope with Google, the Related Press has signed one with OpenAI, and Tumblr proprietor Automattic has stated it’s working “with choose AI corporations” however will permit customers to choose out of getting their information handed alongside. Not one of the licensors instantly responded to requests for remark. Reddit additionally isn’t the one firm receiving an FTC letter about information licensing, Axios reported on Friday, citing an unnamed former company official.
It’s unclear whether or not the letter to Reddit is straight associated to evaluation into another corporations.
Reddit stated in Friday’s disclosure that it doesn’t consider that it engaged in any unfair or misleading practices however warned that coping with any authorities inquiry might be pricey and time-consuming. “The letter indicated that the FTC employees was keen on assembly with us to be taught extra about our plans and that the FTC supposed to request info and paperwork from us as its inquiry continues,” the submitting says. Reddit stated the FTC letter described the scrutiny as associated to “a private inquiry.”
Reddit, whose 17 billion posts and feedback are seen by AI specialists as helpful for coaching chatbots within the artwork of dialog, introduced a deal final month to license the content material to Google. Reddit and Google didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. The FTC declined to remark. (Advance Journal Publishers, mother or father of WIRED’s writer Condé Nast, owns a stake in Reddit.)
AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini are seen as a aggressive risk to Reddit, publishers, and different ad-supported, content-driven companies. Prior to now 12 months the prospect of licensing information to AI builders emerged as a possible upside of generative AI for some corporations.
However using information harvested on-line to coach AI fashions has raised numerous questions winding by means of boardrooms, courtrooms, and Congress. For Reddit and others whose information is generated by customers, these questions embrace who actually owns the content material and whether or not it’s honest to license it out with out giving the creator a minimize. Safety researchers have discovered that AI fashions can leak private information included within the materials used to create them. And a few critics have recommended the offers might make highly effective corporations much more dominant.
