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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months 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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[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

Is it scraping or just searching?
RAG is a pretty common technique for making LLMs useful: the LLM "decides" it needs external data, and so it reaches out to configured data source. Such a data source could be just plain ol google.

[-] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I think their documentation will help shed some light on this. Reading my edits will hopefully clarify that too. Either way, I always recommend reading their docs! :)

[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

I guess after a bit more consideration, my previous question doesn't really matter.

If it's scraped and baked into the model; or if it's scraped, indexed, and used in RAG; they're both the same ethically.

And I generally consider AI to be fairly unethical

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months 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.

[-] monk@lemmy.unboiled.info 1 points 6 months ago

Questions? There are no questions. Just wait until it starts spewing copyrighted contents in violation of the license it's distributed with, then sue.

[-] platypode@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months 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.

[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months 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

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[-] will_a113@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months 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.

[-] VoterFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months 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.

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[-] vox@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 months ago

theyre not training it
its basically just a glorified search engine.

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[-] mtchristo@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago

Did you specifically inquire about content from your own profile ? Can you share the prompt ? And how close to the source material was its response ?

[-] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

However, when I ran the same prompt again (or similar prompts), it started hallucinating a lot of information. So, it seems like the answers are very hit or miss. Maybe that's an issue that can be solved with some prompt engineering and as one's account gets more established.

[-] Eheran@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

2 days ago, so the date in the picture is wrong?

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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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