this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024

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261

How do you feel about your content getting scraped by AI models? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I created this account two days ago, but one of my posts ended up in the (metaphorical) hands of an AI powered search engine that has scraping capabilities. What do you guys think about this? How do you feel about your posts/content getting scraped off of the web and potentially being used by AI models and/or AI powered tools? Curious to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.

#Prompt Update

The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user [email protected] on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.

It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the "Notable Posts" section.

For more information, check this comment.

Edit¹: This is Perplexity. Perplexity AI employs data scraping techniques to gather information from various online sources, which it then utilizes to feed its large language models (LLMs) for generating responses to user queries. The scraping process involves automated crawlers that index and extract content from websites, including articles, summaries, and other relevant data. It is an advanced conversational search engine that enhances the research experience by providing concise, sourced answers to user queries. It operates by leveraging AI language models, such as GPT-4, to analyze information from various sources on the web. (12/28/2024)

Edit²: One could argue that data scraping by services like Perplexity may raise privacy concerns because it collects and processes vast amounts of online information without explicit user consent, potentially including personal data, comments, or content that individuals may have posted without expecting it to be aggregated and/or analyzed by AI systems. One could also argue that this indiscriminate collection raise questions about data ownership, proper attribution, and the right to control how one's digital footprint is used in training AI models. (12/28/2024)

Edit³: I added the second image to the post and its description. (12/29/2024).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

It seems quite inevitable that AI web crawlers will catch all of us eventually, although that said, I don't think perplexity knows that I've never interacted with szmer.info, nor said YES as a single comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

theyre not training it
its basically just a glorified search engine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not Perplexity specifically; I'm taking about the broader "issue" of data-mining and it's implications :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Could lemmy add random text only readable by bot on every post.. or should I add it somehow myself every time I type something?

spoiler

growing concern over the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. This event marked the beginning of what would soon become a global pandemic, fundamentally altering the course of 2020 and beyond.

As reports began to surface about a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, health officials and scientists scrambled to understand the nature of the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) was alerted, and investigations were launched to identify the source and transmission methods of the virus. Initial findings suggested that the virus was linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, raising alarms about zoonotic diseases—those that jump from animals to humans.

The situation garnered significant media attention, as experts warned of the potential for widespread transmission. Social media platforms buzzed with discussions about the virus, its symptoms, and preventive measures. Public health officials emphasized the importance of hygiene practices, such as handwashing and wearing masks, to mitigate the risk of infection.

As the world prepared to ring in the new year, the implications of this outbreak were still unfolding. Little did anyone know that this would be the precursor to a global health crisis that would dominate headlines, reshape societies, and challenge healthcare systems worldwide throughout 2020 and beyond. The events of late December 2019 set the stage for a year of unprecedented change, highlighting the interconnectedness of global health and the importance of preparedness in the face of emerging infectious diseases.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Interesting question... I think it would be possible, yes. Poison the data, in a way.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

I think this is inevitable, which is why we (worldwide) need laws where if a model scrapes public data should become open itself as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Whatever I put on Lemmy or elsewhere on the fediverse implicitly grants a revocable license to everyone that allows them to view and replicate the verbatim content, by way of how the fediverse works. You may apply all the rights that e.g. fair use grants you of course but it does not grant you the right to perform derivative works; my content must be unaltered.

When I delete some piece of content, that license is effectively revoked and nobody is allowed to perform the verbatim content any longer. Continuing to do so is a clear copyright violation IMHO but it can be ethically fine in some specific cases (e.g. archival).

Due to the nature of how the fediverse, you can't expect it to take effect immediately but it should at some point take effect and I should be able to manually cause it to immediately come into effect by e.g. contacting an instance admin to ask for a removed post of mine to be removed on their instance aswell.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No matter how I feel about it, it's one of those things I know I will never be able to do a fucking thing about, so all I can do is accept it as the new reality I live in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've been thinking for a while about how a text-oriented website would work if all the text in the database was rendered as SVG figures.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not very friendly to the disabled?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Aside from that. Accessibility standards are hardly considered even now and I'd rather install a generated audio version option with some audio poisoning to mess with the AIs listening to it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Its not fine when Ai starts scrapping Data that is Personal (Like Face,Age,ID) And My Source Code(Because Most of the code ai scraps are copyleft or require attribution),Public Information Am Okay like Comments,Etc that dont contain the things said above.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I’m pretty much fine with AIs scraping my data. What they can see is public knowledge and was already being scraped by search engines.

I object to:

sites like Reddit whose entire existence is due to user content, deciding they can police and monetize my content. They have no right
sharing of data, which includes more personal and identifiable data
whatever the AI summarizes me as being treated as fact, such as by a company hr, regardless of context, accuracy, hallucinations

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

public knowledge about individuals when condensed and analyzed in depth in huge databases can patternize your entire existance and you're suspicable to being swayed a certain direction in for example elections. Creating further divide and into someone elses pockets.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe but I can’t object too much if I put my content out in public. When forced to create an account I use minimal/false information and a unique generated email. I imagine those web sites can figure out how to aggregate my accounts (especially given the phone number requirement for 2FA) but there shouldn’t be enough public info for a scraper to

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Gotta think larger than yourself though. What happens when your spouse uses real info? your kids? your parents? they'll shadowplay your person with great accuracy and fill in the gaps. You don't even have to "put content" out there. Said databases can just put two and two together. How will you, or other uses even know you're actually talking to a human? perhaps you're on Lemmy and we're all bots trying to get you to admit fragments of your latest crimes in order to get you into jail for said crime? etcetera. At first glance this all looks harmless but any accumulated information in huge databases is a major infringement to personal integrety at best; and complete control of your freedom at worst. The ultimate power is when someone can make you do X or Y and you don't even realize you're doing their bidding; but believe you have a choice when you don't. (Similiar to how it is in my living situation at home with my gf that is :P jk.)

Hakuna matata. Happy new year

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I completely agree, except that I think of them as multiple related privacy issues. In the scope of ai bots scraping my public content, most of these are out of scope

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

sites like Reddit whose entire existence is due to user content, deciding they can police and monetize my content. They have no right

Um, not they do in fact have "every right" here. It's shitty of course but you explicitly gave them that right in form of an perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide etc. license to do whatever they like to everything you publish on their site.

They also have every right to "police" your content, especially if it's objectionable. If you post vile shit, trolling or other societal garbage behaviour on the internet, nobody wants to see it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

What did you mean by "police" your content?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Probably not the right word, but my content should still be my content. I offered it to Reddit but that doesn’t mean they have the right to charge others for it or restrict it to others for commercial reasons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not the person you are replying to but Reddit does not make the content you created available for everyone (blocking crawlers, removing the free API) but instead sells it to the highest bidder.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Right, that’s my objection. After benefitting from my content, they police it, as in restrict other sites from seeing it, until it’s monetized. It’s not Reddits to charge money for

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

As an artist, I feel the majority of AI art is very anti-human. I really don't like the idea that they could train AI off my art so it may replicate something like it. Why automate something so deeply human? We're supposed to automate more mundane tasks so we can focus on art, not the other way around! I also never expected every tech company to suddenly participate in what feels like blatant copyright infringement, I always assumed at least art was safe in their hands.

Public conversations though? I dunno. I kinda already assume that anything I post is going to be data-mined, so it doesn't feel very different than it was. There's a lot of usefulness that can come from datamining the internet theoretically, but we exist under capitalism, so I imagine it'll be for much more nefarious uses.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Seems odd that someone from dbzer0 would be very concerned about data ownership. How come?

I don't exactly know how Perplexity runs its service. I assume that their AI reacts to such a question by googling the name and then summarizing the results. You certainly received much less info about yourself than you could have gotten via a search engine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Seems odd that someone from dbzer0 would be very concerned about data ownership. How come?

That doesn't make much sense. I created this post to spark a discussion and hear different perspectives on data ownership. While I've shared some initial points, I'm more interested in learning what others think about this topic rather than expressing concerns. Please feel free to share your thoughts – as you already have.

I don't exactly know how Perplexity runs its service. I assume that their AI reacts to such a question by googling the name and then summarizing the results. You certainly received much less info about yourself than you could have gotten via a search engine.

Feel free to go back to the post and read the edits. They may help shed some light on this. I also recommend checking Perplexity's official docs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Feel free to go back to the post and read the edits. They may help shed some light on this. I also recommend checking Perplexity’s official docs.

You're aware that it's in their best interest to make everyone think their """AI""" can execute advanced cognitive tasks, even if it has no ability to do so whatsoever and it's mostly faked?

Taking what an """AI""" company has to say about their product at face value in this part of the hype cycle is questionable at best.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You're aware that it's in their best interest to make everyone think their """AI""" can execute advanced cognitive tasks, even if it has no ability to do so whatsoever and it's mostly faked?

Are you sure you read the edits in the post? Because they say the exact contrary; Perplexity isn't all powerful and all knowing. It just crawls the web and uses other language models to "digest" what it found. They are also developing their own LLMs. Ask Perplexity yourself or check the documentations.

Taking what an """AI""" company has to say about their product at face value in this part of the hype cycle is questionable at best.

Sure, that might be part of it, but they've always been very transparent on their reliance on third party models and web crawlers. I'm not even sure what your point here is. Don't take what they said at face value; test the claims yourself.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Especially now that we know that the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is to declare that an AGI had been developed once a system makes over $100 billion in profits.

https://gizmodo.com/leaked-documents-show-openai-has-a-very-clear-definition-of-agi-2000543339

They do not give a shit about the reality of their product.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Mine kinda tries to bullshit me about it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Whatever you put on public domain without explicit license, it becomes CC-0 equivalent. So while it feels violating, it's perfectly fine. The best opsec should be separating your digital identities and also your physical life if you don't want it to be aggregated in the same way. These technologies (scraping) have been around for a while and along with llm's will stay for quite sometime in future, there's no way around them.

PS: you, here, is generic you, not referring to OP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Legal concept of grandfathering should be applicable here. There was no way for online artists to know that was going to be part of a corporately forced agreement to putting their work online. They aren't even given an out in the US. At the very least work posted prior to the AI training public announcement that it was happening should be exempt.

That doesn't address the problem that if artists don't want their art scraped now they can't post it anywhere and can't make a living. How is that a free market? Let corporations exploit your work for free and make bank on it or starve isn't a world anyone should be striving to live in.

This whole thing amounts to big corporations bullying individual artists out of playing field and it's wrong. As if any of them were ever really a threat in the first place. They just like stepping on little people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

In order to put something in the public domain, you need to explicitly do that. Publicising is not the same as putting something in the public domain.

This comment I'm writing here is not in the public domain and I don't need to explicitly mention that. It's "all rights reserved" by default in most western jurisdictions. You're not allowed to do anything whatsoever with it other than what is covered by explicit exemptions from copyright such as fair use (e.g. you quote parts of my comment to reply to it).

Encoding my comment into the weights of a statistical model to closer imitate human writing is a derivative work (IMHO) and therefore needs explicit permission from the copyright holder (me) or licensee authorised by said copyright holder to sublicense it in such a way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Technically, in the U.S., there is no way to intentionally put something in the public domain. The best you can do is tell everyone it's public domain and pledge not to sue anyone for using it.

The shitty thing is that you could turn around tomorrow and start suing people for copyright infringement if they use that material.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is yet another reason why 2FA over phone is a bad idea. I create every account with a unique generated email, a unique generated password and minimal/random personal data. I’m finally at a place where it’s convenient to create accounts with no obvious connection ….. but I only have one phone number. They say it’s for account security, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s mainly for data aggregation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Yes that is absolutely annoying and I hardly use such online services other than those I have to like bank, any government services, package delivery/ridebooking etc where in app call doesn't exist and calling is necessary sometimes and some healthcare.

Sometimes they do it to reduce throwaway/inactive accounts as (npn voip) phone numbers are harder to get at scale than email ids. But ironically, some countries have law requiring them to keep the logs so it might be used to connect identity against one's will, say, by law enforcement.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Whatever you put on public domain without explicit license, it becomes CC-0 equivalent.

What does "putting on public domain" mean to you? The way you say that sounds a little weird to me, like there is a misunderstanding here.

Dedicating copyrighted material to the public domain is a deliberate action in some jurisdictions, and impossible in others (like mine, Switzerland). Just publishing a text you wrote for public consumption is something different. That doesn't affect your copyright at all. Unless you have an agreement with the publisher that you grant them a license to use your text by posting it to their website.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I'm not talking about giving up copyright to content. CC-0 means waiving any as much rights as possible legally, which depends on jurisdiction.

and impossible in others (like mine, Switzerland)

I couldn't find anything about default license of publicly available material in your country, nor about the impossibility you mentioned by basic web search. I'm genuinely interested to read about it so do share sources if you can.

Btw there is a FEP and some discussions that talks exactly about the issue you mentioned in the root post.

Edit: formatting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I’m not talking about giving up copyright to content.

Hm, once again I don't understand your meaning, sorry. The public domain in my understanding is the totality of all content that is not under copyright protection. So "putting on public domain" sounds to me like you're talking about giving up copyright. Please explain what you mean with that phrase, since I seem to be misunderstanding.

CC-0 means waiving any as much rights as possible legally, which depends on jurisdiction.

Yes I'm a little familiar, I looked through the CC licenses before and decided CC0 wasn't the best fit for Switzerland. CC0 is meant to dedicate a work to the public domain, i.e. waive all copyright from it. But I now see that it also specifically has a public license fallback for jurisdictions where the public domain dedication doesn't work, in Section 3.

I couldn’t find anything about default license of publicly available material in your country

There isn't such a thing as a default license here, nor have I heard of such a thing in general before. In my understanding a license is an agreement for partial or total transfer of copyrights. But the default state, in my understanding, is that the copyright lies with the creator and no agreement for transfer exists. Authors have the copyright over a work from the moment creation of a work in Switzerland. They can make agreements with others to confer some of these rights. In Switzerland, in contrast to other places, the authors additionally have moral rights that cannot be broken or sold at all. For a more digestible intro I would suggest this site.

nor about the impossibility you mentioned

The absence of the possibility of making works public domain before the copyright term runs out automatically is harder to show, it's not like it's forbidden by statute, but simply that there isn't a recognized mechanism for it. The best thing I can link is the Factsheet about Public Domain from the following page on the site of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, check number 9 on page 4 in the PDF, it says:

Can I relinquish the copyright to one of my own works by assigning it to the public domain?

Copyright arises automatically and, in contrast to property law, there is no procedure for simply giving up this right. An author, therefore, does not have any direct possibility of giving a work to the public domain. However, he is at liberty to simply tolerate copyright infringement and to waive legal prosecution. In addition, an author can actively decide to make his work available under an appropriate Creative Commons licence, which is very similar to the public domain, or an equivalent type of public licence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

In Switzerland, in contrast to other places, the authors additionally have moral rights that cannot be broken or sold at all. For a more digestible intro I would suggest this site.

I didn't know this transferable vs non transferable classification of rights exists. It changed my theory about copyright as whole. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

What you are saying is essentially how it works in the U.S. too. There is no legal way to make your work public domain. The best you can do is just tell people it's public domain and then not sue anyone for using the material. But you would still have the right to sue them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I'm perfectly down with everything being scraped and slammed into AI the same way I've been down with search engines having it all for ages. I just want any models that contain information scraped from the public to be publicly available.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

if I have no other choice, then I'll use my data to reduce AI into an unusable state, or at the very least a state where it's aware that everything it spews out happens to be bullshit and ends each prompt with something like "but what I say likely isn't true. Please double check with these sources..." or something productive that reduces the reliance on AI in general

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

How do you feel about your content getting scraped by AI models?

I think famous Hollywood actress Margot Robbie summed my thoughts up pretty well.

I don't like it, but I accept it as inevitable.

I wouldn't say I go online with the intent of deceiving people, but I think it's important in the modern day to seed in knowingly false details about your life, demographics, and identity here and there to prevent yourself from being doxxed online by AI.

I don't care what the LLMs know about me if I am not actually a real person, even if my thoughts and ideas are real.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Hey, I know her, I'm pretty sure she's in that one movie I watched!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

I tested it out, not really very accurate and seems to confuse users, but scraping has been a thing for decades, this isn't new.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Did you specifically inquire about content from your own profile ? Can you share the prompt ? And how close to the source material was its response ?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user [email protected] on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.

It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the "Notable Posts" section.

However, when I ran the same prompt again (or similar prompts), it started hallucinating a lot of information. So, it seems like the answers are very hit or miss. Maybe that's an issue that can be solved with some prompt engineering and as one's account gets more established.

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