Reddit reportedly signed an AI content licensing deal

The AI landscape has changed significantly since significant publishers such as the New York Times began to crack down on the unprompted use of their content to train AI models.

But the Internet has the Golden Grail with millions of posts of useful, and more importantly unique, human-written content that can significantly help in learning and improving models. On February 16, 2024, Bloomberg reported that Reddit had signed an agreement with an undisclosed company to license content from this popular community for model training.

In the future, this deal could form the basis for similar deals for other publishers that could generate additional revenue streams, according to Bloomberg.

But it hasn’t gone without a hitch, and the Reddit community isn’t happy. Especially when it’s juxtaposed with the fact that Reddit has previously restricted the use of its own API. One Reddit user writes, “This is why they killed the API. Can’t sell something if you are handing it out for free.”

This news comes amid Reddit’s attempts to go public, where the company wants to raise at least a $5 billion valuation. But it’s facing challenges in the tech sector, including massive employee layoffs and uncertainty. In 2023, Reddit, Inc.’s revenue rose to $800 million, up from $666 million in 2022, but the company is still not profitable.