Social media site Reddit will allow the use of its content to train Google’s emerging AI-powered chatbots, in a revenue-boosting contract worth about $60 million a year. The move is in preparation for Reddit’s planned stock market debut; the platform is expected to file its initial public offering (IPO) later this week. Its deal with Google is the first with a leading AI innovator since Reddit announced it would sell commercial access to its content last year, and comes as many other AI designers have signed contracts to use content beyond what’s available on the internet to train their models. That process is notoriously dicey because of potential copyright issues: In fall 2023, a group of prominent authors including Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham sued OpenAI for allegedly using their work without their knowledge to train ChatGPT, and in December, TheNew York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for the same reason.
