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Quora’s Chatbot Platform Poe Allows Users to Download Paywalled Articles on Demand

Jun 28, 2024 - wired.com
Poe, an AI chatbot platform owned by Quora and backed by a $75 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, is offering users downloadable HTML files of articles from paywalled journalistic outlets. Users can prompt the Assistant bot with a URL of an article, and the bot provides a detailed summary and a downloadable HTML file of the entire article. This has raised concerns about copyright infringement, with James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University, stating that making a copy on their own server is prima facie copyright infringement.

Quora disputes this, comparing Poe to a cloud storage service. The company states that the bot only sees content served by the domain and that the file attachments are created at the direction of users, similar to 'read it later' services and 'web clipper' products. However, several publishers, including The New York Times and Forbes, have threatened legal action against AI companies for alleged copyright infringement.

Key takeaways:

  • Poe, an AI chatbot platform owned by Quora, provides users with downloadable HTML files of articles from paywalled journalistic outlets, potentially infringing on copyright laws.
  • Quora bots have been observed accessing sites immediately after being prompted by Poe's chatbot, suggesting a disregard for the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
  • Quora compares Poe's functionality to a cloud storage service, arguing that it is consistent with copyright law, but this stance is disputed by experts and publishers.
  • Several publishers, including The New York Times and Forbes, have taken legal action against AI companies for alleged copyright infringement.
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