Report: Reddit Signs Big Licensing Deal with Unnamed AI Company

Posted on February 18, 2024

A Bloomberg report says Reddit has signed a licensing deal with an unnamed AI company to allow the company to train its AI models using Reddit content. The deal is reportedly worth $60 million annually.

Engadget reports that Reddit is planning for an upcoming IPO with a $5 billion valuation. A solid revenue stream would help with that. As would Reddit's plans to charge for tiered API access.

However, it could cause concern among Reddit users. They are the ones creating the Reddit content. Some may not want it being used to train complex programs. Redditors have balked against some of the company's plans in the past - even shutting down large sections.

As @pkedrosky notes on threads: "Everyone sharing content online-including here-is now just an unpaid day laborer on someone else's LLM training farm. The only difference is that some companies make it more obvious than others."

The trend lately has been for social media companies to profit more and more from the content created and shared by its users. The social media users certainly have the power to organize and temporarily block some of these profiteering efforts but the most effective way is to stop sharing content which also hurts the community itself.



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