Online data is not free data. But artificial intelligence (AI) companies are shamelessly sucking up as much of this “free” data as possible to train AI models they are developing. Anthropic is the latest AI company to be sued for allegedly using Reddit data without permission.
Reddit claims that Athropic’s bot accessed the site over 100,000 times despite saying it would stop this activity by July 2024. Anthropic also refuses to participate in a data licensing program with Reddit like Google and OpenAI. In an official statement issued by Anthropic, they deny the accusations of using Reddit data without permission and will defend themselves in court.
AI companies are starting to charge for using their latest AI models. With the revenue generated, it’s time to pay for the work of the data source. In addition to Athropic, this year we also saw the case of Meta being sued by authors after they were found to have trained AI models like Llama using pirated books via Torrent.