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Reddit said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that its users’ posts are “a valuable source of conversation data and knowledge” that has been and will continue to be an important mechanism for training AI and large language models. The filing also states that the company believes “we are in the early stages of monetizing our user base,” and proceeds to say that it will continue to sell users’ content to companies that want to train LLMs and that it will also begin “increased use of artificial intelligence in our advertising solutions.”
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Reddit has entered a contract with Google, which will license its content for $60 million a year in order to train Google’s AI models.
The long-awaited S-1 filing reveals much of what Reddit users knew and feared: That many of the changes the company has made over the last year in the leadup to an IPO are focused on exerting control over the site, sanitizing parts of the platform, and monetizing user data. The filing says Reddit has already entered into contracts that will pay it at least $203 million over the next 2-3 years for “data licensing” that consists of “allowing third parties to access, search, and analyze data on our platform.”