The FTC is probing Reddit’s AI licensing deals

The Federal Trade Commission is looking into Reddit’s AI licensing deals, the company in paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is in the midst of its Initial Public Offering, said that the regulator notified Reddit officials that it “intended to request information and documents” about the company’s AI deals.

It’s not clear why the FTC is probing Reddit’s relatively new licensing business, but it seems to be in the early stages of its inquiry. “On March 14, 2024, we received a letter from the FTC advising us that the FTC’s staff is conducting a non-public inquiry focused on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models,” Reddit wrote in a filing. “Given the novel nature of these technologies and commercial arrangements, we are not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest in this area. We do not believe that we have engaged in any unfair or deceptive trade practice.”

Reddit’s deals to license its catalog of user-generated content are a key part of the company’s strategy to grow its revenue as it gets ready to . On the day the company filed for IPO, the company announced it had reached a deal with Google, which will use Reddit data to train its AI models. That arrangement was reportedly worth around . The company said it was in the early stages of “exploring” these types of deals.

According , other companies have received similar letters from the FTC. The regulator has previously shown an interest in the current wave of generative AI upstarts and their relationships with large tech companies, The FTC is currently Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon over their investments into prominent AI startups.

Source link

Technology

gaitQ and machineMD secure million dollar research grant to monitor Parkinson’s development in UK and Switzerland

Oxford-based medical technology start-up gaitQ and Swiss medical device company machineMD have announced the joint award of a million dollar research grant from Innovate UK and Innosuisse to enable the collection and analysis of critical movement data from people with Parkinson’s (PwP). The grant will fund an 18-month research project that will record movement data […]

Read More
Technology

Take-Two plans to lay off 5 percent of its employees by the end of 2024

Take-Two Interactive plans to lay off 5 percent of its workforce, or about 600 employees, by the end of the year, as reported in an SEC filing Tuesday. The studio is also canceling several in-development projects. These moves are expected to cost $160 million to $200 million to implement, and should result in $165 million […]

Read More
Technology

10 tips to avoid planting AI timebombs in your organization

At the recent HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, I delivered a talk focused on protecting against some of the pitfalls of artificial intelligence in healthcare. The objective was to encourage healthcare professionals to think deeply about the realities of AI transformation, while providing them with real-world examples of how to proceed safely […]

Read More