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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I created this account two days ago, but one of my posts ended up in the (metaphorical) hands of an AI powered search engine that has scraping capabilities. What do you guys think about this? How do you feel about your posts/content getting scraped off of the web and potentially being used by AI models and/or AI powered tools? Curious to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.


#Prompt Update

The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.

It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the "Notable Posts" section.

For more information, check this comment.


Edit¹: This is Perplexity. Perplexity AI employs data scraping techniques to gather information from various online sources, which it then utilizes to feed its large language models (LLMs) for generating responses to user queries. The scraping process involves automated crawlers that index and extract content from websites, including articles, summaries, and other relevant data. It is an advanced conversational search engine that enhances the research experience by providing concise, sourced answers to user queries. It operates by leveraging AI language models, such as GPT-4, to analyze information from various sources on the web. (12/28/2024)

Edit²: One could argue that data scraping by services like Perplexity may raise privacy concerns because it collects and processes vast amounts of online information without explicit user consent, potentially including personal data, comments, or content that individuals may have posted without expecting it to be aggregated and/or analyzed by AI systems. One could also argue that this indiscriminate collection raise questions about data ownership, proper attribution, and the right to control how one's digital footprint is used in training AI models. (12/28/2024)

Edit³: I added the second image to the post and its description. (12/29/2024).

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[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

I’m pretty much fine with AIs scraping my data. What they can see is public knowledge and was already being scraped by search engines.

I object to:

  • sites like Reddit whose entire existence is due to user content, deciding they can police and monetize my content. They have no right
  • sharing of data, which includes more personal and identifiable data
  • whatever the AI summarizes me as being treated as fact, such as by a company hr, regardless of context, accuracy, hallucinations
[-] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

What did you mean by "police" your content?

the fediverse is largely public. so i would only put here public info. ergo, i dont give a shit what the public does with it.

[-] ripley@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I don't think it's unreasonable to be uneasy with how technology is shifting the meaning of what public is. It used to be walking the dog meant my neighbors could see me on the sidewalk while I was walking. Now there are ring cameras, etc. recording my every movement and we've seen that abused in lots of different ways.

[-] Windex007@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

The internet has always been a grand stage, though. We're like 40 years into this reality at this point.

I think people who came-of-age during Facebook missed that memo, though. It was standard, even explicitly recommended to never use your real name or post identifying information on the internet. Facebook kinda beat that out of people under the guise of "only people you know can access your content, so it's ok". People were trained into complacency, but that doesn't mean the nature of the beast had ever changed.

People maybe deluded themselves that posting on the internet was closer to walking their dog in their neighbourhood than it was to broadcasting live in front of international film crews, but they were (and always have been) dead wrong.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

We're like 40 years into this reality at this point.

We are not 40 years into everyone's every action (online and, increasingly, even offline via location tracking and facial recognition cameras) being tracked, stored in a database, and analyzed by AI. That's both brand new and way worse than even what the pre-Facebook "don't use your real name online" crowd was ever warning about.

I mean, yes, back in the day it was understood that the stuff you actively write and post on Usenet or web forums might exist forever (the latter, assuming the site doesn't get deleted or at least gets archived first), but (a) that's still only stuff you actively chose to share, and (b) at least at the time, it was mostly assumed to be a person actively searching who would access it -- that retrieving it would take a modicum of effort. And even that was correctly considered to be a great privacy risk, requiring vigilance to mitigate.

These days, having an entire industry dedicated to actively stalking every user for every passive signal and scrap of metadata they can possibly glean, while moreover the users themselves are much more "normie"/uneducated about the threat, is materially even worse by a wide margin.

[-] sarahduck@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As an artist, I feel the majority of AI art is very anti-human. I really don't like the idea that they could train AI off my art so it may replicate something like it. Why automate something so deeply human? We're supposed to automate more mundane tasks so we can focus on art, not the other way around! I also never expected every tech company to suddenly participate in what feels like blatant copyright infringement, I always assumed at least art was safe in their hands.

Public conversations though? I dunno. I kinda already assume that anything I post is going to be data-mined, so it doesn't feel very different than it was. There's a lot of usefulness that can come from datamining the internet theoretically, but we exist under capitalism, so I imagine it'll be for much more nefarious uses.

[-] serenissi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Whatever you put on public domain without explicit license, it becomes CC-0 equivalent. So while it feels violating, it's perfectly fine. The best opsec should be separating your digital identities and also your physical life if you don't want it to be aggregated in the same way. These technologies (scraping) have been around for a while and along with llm's will stay for quite sometime in future, there's no way around them.

PS: you, here, is generic you, not referring to OP.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

This is yet another reason why 2FA over phone is a bad idea. I create every account with a unique generated email, a unique generated password and minimal/random personal data. I’m finally at a place where it’s convenient to create accounts with no obvious connection ….. but I only have one phone number. They say it’s for account security, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s mainly for data aggregation

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I run my own instance and have a long list of user agents I flat out block, and that includes all known AI scraper bots.

That only prevents them from scraping from my instance, though, and they can easily scrape my content from any other instance I've interacted with.

Basically I just accept it as one of the many, many things that sucks about the internet in 2024, yell "Serenity Now!" at the sky, and carry on with my day.

I do wish, though, that other instances would block these LLM scraping bots but I'm not going to avoid any that don't.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

you might be interested to know that UA blocking is not enough: https://feddit.bg/post/13575

the main thing is in the comments

[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

If there was only some way to make any attempts at building an accurate profile of one's online presence via data scraping completely useless by masking one's own presence within the vast quantity of online data of someone else, let's say for example, a famous public figure.

But who would do such a thing?

[-] baatliwala@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Can't wait for someone to ask an LLM "Hey tell me what Margot Robbie's interests are" only for it to respond "Margot Robbie is a known supporter of free software, and a fierce proponent of beheading CEOs".

[-] Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

As I live and breathe, it's the famous Margot Robbie herself!

[-] Stovetop@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

How do you feel about your content getting scraped by AI models?

I think famous Hollywood actress Margot Robbie summed my thoughts up pretty well.

I don't like it, but I accept it as inevitable.

I wouldn't say I go online with the intent of deceiving people, but I think it's important in the modern day to seed in knowingly false details about your life, demographics, and identity here and there to prevent yourself from being doxxed online by AI.

I don't care what the LLMs know about me if I am not actually a real person, even if my thoughts and ideas are real.

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Mine kinda tries to bullshit me about it.

[-] Battle_Masker@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

if I have no other choice, then I'll use my data to reduce AI into an unusable state, or at the very least a state where it's aware that everything it spews out happens to be bullshit and ends each prompt with something like "but what I say likely isn't true. Please double check with these sources..." or something productive that reduces the reliance on AI in general

[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Seems odd that someone from dbzer0 would be very concerned about data ownership. How come?

I don't exactly know how Perplexity runs its service. I assume that their AI reacts to such a question by googling the name and then summarizing the results. You certainly received much less info about yourself than you could have gotten via a search engine.

See also: Forer Effect aka Barnum Effect

[-] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Seems odd that someone from dbzer0 would be very concerned about data ownership. How come?

That doesn't make much sense. I created this post to spark a discussion and hear different perspectives on data ownership. While I've shared some initial points, I'm more interested in learning what others think about this topic rather than expressing concerns. Please feel free to share your thoughts – as you already have.

I don't exactly know how Perplexity runs its service. I assume that their AI reacts to such a question by googling the name and then summarizing the results. You certainly received much less info about yourself than you could have gotten via a search engine.

Feel free to go back to the post and read the edits. They may help shed some light on this. I also recommend checking Perplexity's official docs.

[-] platypode@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

As with any public forum, by putting content on Lemmy you make it available to the world at large to do basically whatever they want with. I don’t like AI scrapers in general, but I can’t reasonably take issue with this.

[-] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

Nothing I say is of any real value even to the people I reply to, much less the world at large. Frankly, I hope someone uses my data to write Apple a decent fucking autocorrect. Otherwise, I don't care.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Well your handle is the mascot for the open LLM space…

Seriously though, why care? What we say in public is public domain.

It reminds me of people on NexusMods getting in a fuss over “how” people use the mods they publicly upload, or open source projects imploding over permissive licenses they picked… Or Ao3 having a giant fuss over this very issue, and locking down what’s supposed to be a public archive.

I can hate entities like OpenAI all I want, but anything I put out there is fair game.

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

I'm perfectly down with everything being scraped and slammed into AI the same way I've been down with search engines having it all for ages. I just want any models that contain information scraped from the public to be publicly available.

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I don't like it, that's why I like to throw in just a cup or two of absolute bullshit with just a pinch of cilantro. then top it off with a firm jiggle to get that last drop out from the tip.

I couldn't even imagine speaking like this at first, but once you get used to it the firmness just slides right in and gives you a sense of fulfillment that you can't find anywhere else but home.

When the cows come home to roost, you know it's time to hang up your hat, take off your pants, and slide on the ice.

[-] brie@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

I expect all my public posts to be scraped, and I'm fine with that. I'm slightly biased towards it if it's for code generation.

[-] will_a113@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago

There are at least one or two Lemmy users who add a CC or non-AI license footer to their posts. Not that it’s do anything, but it might be fun to try and get the LLM to admit it’s illegally using your content.

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Sadly it hasn’t been proven in court yet that copyright even matters for training AI.

And we damn well know it doesn’t for Chinese AI models.

[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

It'd be hilarious if the model spat out the non-AI license footer in response to a prompt.

[-] rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

I did tell one of them a few months ago that all they’re going to do is train the AI that sometimes people end their posts with useless copyright notices. It doesn’t understand anything. But superstitious monkeys gonna be superstitious monkeys.

[-] VoterFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Those... don't hold any weight lol. Once you post on any website, you hand copyright over to the website owner. That's what gives them permission to relay your message to anyone reading the website. Copyright doesn't do anything to restrict readers of the content (I.e. model trainers). Only publishers.

this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
24 points (90.0% liked)

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