Technology @lemmy.ml Steve @slrpnk.net 9 mo. ago

Reddit is licensing its content to Google to help train its AI models

www.engadget.com Reddit is licensing its content to Google to help train its AI models

Google has struck a deal with Reddit that will allow the search engine maker to train its AI models on Reddit’s vast catalog of user-generated content.

Google has struck a deal with Reddit that will allow the search engine maker to train its AI models on Reddit’s vast catalog of user-generated content, the two companies announced. Under the arrangement, Google will get access to Reddit’s Data API, which will help the company “better understand” content from the site.

The deal also provides Google with a valuable source of content it can use to train its AI models. “Google will now have efficient and structured access to fresher information, as well as enhanced signals that will help us better understand Reddit content and display, train on, and otherwise use it in the most accurate and relevant ways,” the company said in a statement.

33 comments

Keep making feel good about deleting my 15+ years of Reddit content. Go on...

Edit: I've done it. I've officially deleted my account. For a minute there, I was looking at the front page of Reddit. It's all rage bait. The content is designed to get you to feel something and engage with it. I could feel that itch to comment and downvote. It's preposterous; and soon, all about quarterly gains.
- Ehhh... shame it's too late but there are nice scripts that can bulk-edit all your posts and comments for people using search engines and ai crawlers to stumble upon. I put info about reddit paywalling 3rd party apps and invited readers to join lemmy instead.
  
  I found something that was doing that after I thought it was going to actually delete items. I stopped the script and found something to delete. What's the advantage of editing comments? Just to advertising alternatives?
  
  I could imagine google also gets some sort of snapshots to mitigate the risk that after their announcement everyone deletes/modifies their content.. But who knows.
Awesome so we gonna have a sarcastic bot that speak in memes
- unfunny outdated memes, or also unfunny outdated highschooler memes
- Brb training a bot on 4chan posts.
The creative writing communities aren’t happy about it
...and that's why this is my first post on Lemmy.
- Hello fellow recent AI refugee!
- Welcome!
When this current "AI" bubble bursts, Reddit will be left with nothing. They sold what goodwill they had for a handful of magic beans.
Google shouldn't have to pay. Whatever I may have posted on Reddit was public information. Nobody should need to pay Reddit to read it.
- The argument isn't just around content, it's around hosting. If Google is sitting there scarfing down Reddit's data, that costs Reddit in server time. That can get extremely expensive. So yeah, if Google is going to train an AI that Google will profit off of, it should pay Reddit for server time.
  
  More than server time, for big Internet connections, uploads are priced by the byte. When someone requests a lot of data, reddit has to pay their provider to send it.
is it Reddit's content though?
- It's content that Reddit users generated which apparently is theirs to sell.
  
  From the TOS/EULA, the content belongs to each user, they just license it to Reddit to use as it pleases.
Spez: we want to sell our users' content to anyone with a good price.

Staff: but our users will rage and delete their content.

Spez: not if we remove the API.
- How do you know that deleting anything on Reddit actually deletes anything? It might just hide the content but soft delete it in the database, which means you may not be able to see it anymore but they can still use it for whatever.
I need to change all my comments to how shitty spez is. Is there a quick way to do that?
- Not since they shut down API access. Now it's obvious why they did that.
So glad I purged my content from there last summer
- Have you ever checked back? I only ask because they restored loads of people's deleted content. I had mine restored 3 different times. After my last purge I never checked back.
  
  Yeah I think it's all gone, but maybe some old comment got restored
I just have to port over some guides I did in the past to iFixit, and then I'll pull the trigger on reddit. <

Thanks for making my decision easier.
Hooking up an AI model to the turbo-charged sewage pipe that is Reddit's "vast catalog of user-generated content" has surely got to constitute abuse against machines. If they ever really develop "intelligence" they are going to be absolutely furious with us. 😅
Wheres my cut?
- You're the product, not a customer.

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