Reddit and Stack Overflow to charge AI developers for data harvesting

Wired said on April 20 that both Reddit and Stack Overflow will task AI developers with access to the content of their websites.

Sites may soon charge for data access

In an interview, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar said his website would start charging large AI developers for access to its content.

Stack Overflow is known for its technology-focused Q&A forums. It’s not clear how much the site might charge developers to gain access to its 50 million pages.

In a statement to Wired, Chandrasekar said:

Community platforms that feed [large language models] They should be fully compensated for their contributions so that companies like us can reinvest in our communities…”

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

Some AI datasets consist of data collected from around the web. The Washington Post recently analyzed these datasets and revealed the most frequently accessed websites — many of which may soon be interested in monetizing their data.

Can blockchain help monetize data?

Although it is unclear how much compensation these companies aim to get, or how they plan to monetize their data, several blockchain platforms exist for this purpose.

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

SingularityNET, which appeared around the same time, aims to monetize AI-related services. Significant gains were seen around the launch of GPT4 in mid-March.

CryptoGPT, also designed to monetize AI data, is a recent project with a more skeptical 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.

The post appeared on Reddit, Stack Overflow charging AI developers for data collection first on CryptoSlate.