Reddit has announced that it will start charging companies for access to its data APIs often used to train large-scale artificial intelligence models.
The social media platform said that it was introducing a new "premium access point" for third-party companies that need access to "additional capabilities, higher usage limits, and broader usage rights".
Reddit launched its Data API seven years ago and provides academics, researchers and companies access to a huge number of human-to-human conversations, collected over 18 years. It serves as a treasure trove for companies looking to train AI models.
Reddit said it had "an obligation to our communities to be stewards of this content" and announced updates to its terms that govern the use of its developer tools and services.
It said that it was also building new moderator tools to "ensure any updates to our Terms do not impact their important contributions to their communities".
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In an interview to The New York Times, Reddit founder Steve Huffman said, "The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable" and they did not "need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free".
"More than any other place on the internet, Reddit is a home for authentic conversation" and there were a lot of conversations on the platform "that you’d only ever say in therapy, or A.A., or never at all", Huffman said.
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