Automattic, which owns Tumblr and WordPress, is in talks with Midjourney and OpenAI to sell data from user posts to train artificial intelligence systems.
У report of the 404 Media website, which cites an anonymous source, said that the deals are «imminent».
Automattic is set to launch a new setting in the near future that will «allow users to opt out of sharing data with third parties, including AI companies». However, according to internal correspondence, the company has collected a dump that contains «all public Tumblr content published by users between 2014 and 2023» and, as suggests The Verge, by mistake — all content added to blogs as non-public.
OpenAI and Midjourney have not yet commented on the deal, and Automattic announced on Tuesday a report called «Protecting user selection»which hints at partnerships with unnamed AI companies.
«We currently block major AI platform crawlers by default, including those from major tech companies, and update the lists when new ones are launched», — the report says. «We will only share publicly available content hosted on WordPress.com and Tumblr from users and sites that have not changed their settings».
Further, the company notes that it is already «working with some artificial intelligence companies whose plans are in the community’s interest».
It is known that several large companies have already signed agreements with AI developers to provide training data: Reddit, for example, has a one-year agreement with Google for $60 million, and Shutterstock — with OpenAI.