Reddit, Stack Overflow to charge AI developers for data harvesting

Reddit and Stack Overflow will both charge AI developers for access to the content of their websites, Wired said on April 20.

Sites may soon charge for data acess

In an interview, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar said that his website will begin to charge large AI developers for access to its content.

Stack Overflow is known for its tech-focused community Q&A forums. It is unclear how much the site might charge developers to access its 50 million pages.

In a statement to Wired, Chandrasekar said:

“Community platforms that fuel [large language models] absolutely should be compensated for their contributions so that companies like us can reinvest back into our communities …”

He also alluded to plans from the social network site Reddit, which similarly intends to charge AI developers for access to its user posts. Reddit founder and CEO Steve Huffman made statements to that effect to the New York Times on April 18.

Certain AI datasets are made up of data collected from around the web. Recently, the Washington Post analyzed those datasets and revealed the most frequently sourced websites — many of which may soon take an interest in monetizing their data.

Can blockchain can help monetize data?

Though it is unclear how much compensation these firms aim to obtain, or how they plan to monetize their data, various blockchain platforms exist for this purpose.

Fetch.ai is one platform that aims to monetize AI data, albeit data produced by AI applications rather than data used in those applications. Fetch.ai recently raised $40 million and is among the oldest projects in this category due to its 2019 launch.

SingularityNET, which emerged around the same time, also aims to monetize AI-related services. It saw significant gains around the launch of GPT4 in mid-March.

CryptoGPT, also intended for AI data monetization, is a recent project that has a more questionable reputation due to its ambitious claims and newer age.

However, cryptocurrency-based monetization is not strictly necessary, and it seems likely that many websites will instead rely on traditional monetization.

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