Google seals AI training deal with Reddit

Reddit has partnered with Google, marking the first known arrangement with a major AI development business. It is a social media network, that has partnered with Google so that the latter can use Reddit’s material to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. Reddit announced that it will provide Google with better model-training techniques.

Through the partnership, Reddit has made its data application programming interface (API) available to Google, providing Google with access to Reddit’s vast content in real-time and allowing Reddit content to displayed across Google products.

It will get access to Vertex AI, a Google AI-powered solution that improves business search results. It explains that this upgrade has no bearing on the rules of its data API, which keeps limits on commercial access without requiring permission from businesses or developers.

AI Model Creators’ Negotiations with Content Owners

This collaboration with Google follows news from Bloomberg that revealed Reddit has signed a $60 million training contract with an unidentified AI startup. A plan to charge businesses for using APIs revealed by Reddit a year ago. Reddit has partnered with Google, marking the first known arrangement with a major AI development business.

Google modified its privacy policies in 2023 to permit the use of data that is readily available to the public for AI training. OpenAI released this upgrade soon after Californian class-action lawsuits filed against it, alleging the use of the internet to scrape users’ private information.

The commercial terms of service for the Claude developer have updated, and Anthropic, a generative AI business, has pledged not to exploit client data for large language model (LLM) training starting in January 2024.

Even with the agreement, Reddit and Google haven’t always agreed. Previously, Reddit threatened to stop Google from using its crawlers on the site because it was concerned that businesses would use the data to develop artificial intelligence (AI) models for free.

Reddit filed for an IPO on February 22 to increase its valuation, which estimated to be more than $10 billion in 2021, after a years-long build-up. The first significant social media IPO since Pinterest’s in 2019 will be this one, with the file anticipated to go public in March.

In recent months, AI model creators have aggressively negotiated with content owners, expanding their training data beyond massive online scraping, as many content owners argue their material is used without permission.