Reddit has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, alleging that it trained its models on the site without permission.
Ever since generative AI began skyrocketing in popularity, the legalities behind companies scraping publicly available information to help teach AI models have remained up in the air.
Back in February 2024, Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee called out a “trash” AI chatbot on Twitter/X for using his name without getting permission from him first.
On Wednesday, June 4, Reddit filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for allegedly using public user data to train its models without consent.
Reddit sues Anthropic over AI training
According to The Wall Street Journal, Reddit said the AI company unlawfully used its data for commercial purposes without paying for it or abiding by its user data policy.
“Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent,” the complaint says.
Back in 2024, Reddit struck licensing deals with OpenAI and Google to allow them to scrape the popular site to train models, but WSJ says it failed to strike a deal with Anthropic.
Despite the lack of a deal, Reddit allegedly found Anthropic accessing its servers over 100k times after the AI company said it blocked its bots from doing so.
It’s not the first time the Amazon-backed Anthropic has faced a lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement.
According to The Verge, three authors alleged that the company had “built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books” back in August 2024, and in October 2023, Universal Music Group accused the company of infringement on their copyrighted song lyrics.
Back in February 2024, when Reddit struck a $60M deal with Google to let the California-based company scrape its site to train Gemini, they weren’t the only company looking to strike such deals.
Popular blogging platforms Tumblr and WordPress were reportedly looking to sell user data to AI companies like OpenAI and Midjourney, but it’s unknown whether or not the deals ever actually happened.
Content shared from www.dexerto.com.