Reddit is reportedly selling all of its user data to an AI company for $60 million a year

According to a new report at Bloomberg, Reddit has signed an AI content licensing deal that will see the social media company receive $60 million annually. For a cool $60 million, an unnamed AI company will get access to every Reddit post and thread for AI model training.

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The move comes as a way to boost interest in the upcoming Reddit IPO - with the report stating that Reddit informed potential investors of the $60 million contract earlier this year. Citing sources "familiar with the matter" will give an unknown generative AI model access to decades worth of data, images, clips, and conversations.

Reddit is one of the most popular social destinations on the internet, so a deal like this makes sense when generative AI models need as much data as possible to train on. Until now, using data freely available on the internet (like Reddit posts) has been a go-to for many AI models (including OpenAI's GPT-2), so it's only natural to see money changing hands.

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Recently, Reddit announced its plans to charge for API access and third-party apps and services for interacting with the platform. This news of Reddit data sold for AI training has made its way to Reddit, with many believing the data protection updates were all about being able to sell data versus anything to do with privacy.

"It was very obvious even back then that their only issue with AI companies scraping the entire website was that they forgot to demand rent before they started doing it," writes Redditor 'Berix2010.'

$60 million might not sound like a lot of money when looking at an industry that deals in billions (Reddit is seeking a $5 billion IPO valuation), but it's a milestone for AI. In recent years, there has been a lot of debate surrounding copyright infringement relating to training AI models with data like art, books, and journalism. With several high-profile lawsuits, AI companies actively seek training licensing deals.