However, there are concerns as the company allegedly scraped an initial data dump containing all of Tumblr's public post content from 2014 to 2023, including content that should not have been publicly visible. It is unclear what was done with this data and what data, if any, has been sent to Midjourney and OpenAI. Automattic has responded with a public statement titled "Protecting User Choice", which vaguely refers to partnerships with unnamed AI companies and promises to only share public content from sites that have not opted out.
Key takeaways:
- Automattic, the owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is reportedly in talks with AI companies Midjourney and OpenAI to provide training data scraped from users’ posts.
- Automattic plans to launch a new setting that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies.
- Automattic has allegedly scraped an initial data dump containing all of Tumblr's public post content from 2014 to 2023, including content that wouldn't be publicly visible on blogs.
- Automattic has struggled with monetizing Tumblr, which it acquired from Verizon in 2019, and is looking at potential revenue streams, possibly including deals with AI companies.