Should AI companies pay website owners for scraping their content? (A new opportunity is emerging)
I remember once discussing that intellectual property should be abolished (a quote by Jack Dorsey).
However, it seems that there is also a friendlier option that promotes more benefits for data owners:
Yesterday, I read on TechCrunch that CloudFlare is coming out with a marketplace called "Pay per Crawl" that allows website owners to charge AI companies for scraping their content.
(Side note: The marketplace is still in private beta, and Cloudflare is exploring the possibility of using stablecoins for payments in the future.)
Do you think Cloudflare has found a new niche in the market that will be profitable (or will other companies follow this business model)?
Curious about your thoughts on this situation. đ
Replies
Even if OpenAI has signed a few contracts with major media companies, it doesnât mean that all the data in its training datasets is covered by licenses or that they are willing to pay for all the content they use. No one will voluntarily give up their profits; they will only do so under the pressure of public opinion, the risk of upcoming scandals, or regulatory enforcement. Thatâs why a content marketplace is more like a PR move to show that theyâre using content âfairly.â
My view on this is that thereâs no technical way to track all the content and trace its journey once itâs already âinsideâ the training models. This makes paying for the use of content optional.
@kirill_golubovskiy You are right here. Societal pressure could make them share the profit with creators, but the huge majority of users are not artists, just regular users who do not care so much about Creative Commons. They can notice it only if creating the art were their job.
@busmark_w_nika Weâre getting close to a philosophical question here: what is a truly unique work? Isnât every piece of work today just a reuse with some authorâs reinterpretation of previously existing works?
And those who were inspired by someone elseâs work without paying the original creator now want money from OpenAI for using their work?
@kirill_golubovskiy Austin Kleon was right as well in his book â Steal Like an Artist :) Every piece is somehow reused, and probably there is a limited number of things that can be unique. It seems that the guy who can make the most buzz around his piece of art is a winner. No one remembers the song Banana Boat but everybody remembers the Queen. :) Distribution and the strongest voice matter.
@busmark_w_nika Let me explain my point of view:
As a UI/UX designer, I create mockups based on the clientâs requirements, working with their product. The same design definitely wonât be 100% suitable for another client, because they have different values, target audiences, business models, and product economics. I receive compensation for this work.
After completing a project, I can publish these mockups online in my portfolio, and the product itself also becomes publicly available. Other designers or creators might see my work and get inspired by it, but it would never occur to me to ask them for money for reusing or reworking my designs.
Even if someone completely reuses parts of my work without any changes, it actually shows that the design resonated with people and they find its solutions useful.
Sometimes, not everything should be measured in money â because AI models, possibly even trained on our work, can bring us enormous value in return.
I really wonder about the the marco level consequences to search as an ecosystem. My wife is a food blogger with a big ad network and although those very "human" non-information based blogs seem to be doing fine (so says the ad networks haha) - I feel like its a ticking time bomb for google ads (probably a big line item for them) to determine how to get ahead of exclusively AI generated content on the net or to continue to highlight smaller scale bloggers/creators to avoid a homogeneous experience online.
@dzaitzow but I think that your wife actually has a strong brand that she has been building for a couple of years. In that case, she is more differentiable because she has already created brand awareness. But what about new emerging bloggers? :D
@dzaitzow I am curious to see that change/shift. This era is good for those who grab AI quickly and build, ship fast :D
@busmark_w_nika 100% I think you'll continue seeing the growth of the personal "brand" with a little less white label content out there - that personal IP is going to continue to be the differentiator
@dzaitzow The personal brand topic is something I will dedicate time to today's post :D
Maybe you will have good insights: https://www.producthunt.com/p/general/what-piece-of-advice-would-you-give-to-someone-who-wants-to-start-building-a-personal-brand
Yes Nika, AI companies MUST pay website owners for scraping their content!
And all companies should also pay the users for getting and using their personal data (Permission - $ASK - is working on it).
Yes, it could be a new profitable niche that Cloudfare found, or create, but for sure more competitors will come.
Thanks for another interesting topic.
@terabitcoins Thank you, Tera! But how can we make those big companies share the profit with artists? Because if OpenAI were so "altruistic", this would be their initiative. Unfortunately, it is not.
@busmark_w_nika Boycotting them until they do it fairly to everyone!
@terabitcoins We should make a strike :D
Such a gangster move and putting Cloudfare at the centre of it is brilliant business move. I am just curious to see how they will evolve their position in future to generate more profit, e.g. raising % fee.
@dbul Basically... they will be parasiting too. đ
if they have copy rights then yeah
@ross_danowitz I still somehow feel that even big companies will not want to share pie with creators :D
As someone whose AI ingests a lot of news content (we make a vertical AI for political/regulatory monitoring), I really hope this marketplace works out. I'd love to compensate the news organizations that our AI monitors. We make donations to various news orgs, but a marketplace would make that compensation process a lot more straightforward.
Same with government agencies, departments, ministries, etc (whose publications are the vast majority of what we scrape). If we could compensate governments for providing the communications that we ingest, that could potentially improve government transparency.
@sand1929 In which company do you solve these things?
@busmark_w_nika It's called Parsagon! Our AI helps organizations track policy and regulatory developments in any country/jurisdiction. For example, customers use us to monitor and analyze developments related to vaccine programs in every EU country.