OpenAI signs AI deal with Condé Nast

Condé Nast joins other publishers in allowing OpenAI to access its content.

See full article...

 

[MailDeadDrop]

To be fair, the full phrase is "generate material" and that is not what reportedly happened for that image.

Yeesh, If you're going to pull an "akshually" on me, you should at least get the details correct. From Ken Fisher's original post: (emphasis mine)

Generative AI will not be used to originate materials published by Condé Nast.

So the questions become:
Q1. Is the image in question created by "generative AI" ?
Ans:
a. Can we agree that Gemini is "generative AI"?
b. Can we agree that the image from the article was created by Gemini? (I'm honestly not completely certain, based on the caption.)

Q2. Does an embedded image in an article constitute "published by Condé Nast"?

Q3. Does the caption revealing/confessing the origin of the image alter the situation sufficiently to make its use immune from the policy rule? (Explanation: I get the impression that rule is intended to bar the use of generative AI content without revealing to the audience that the material was originated by generative AI.)

 

[purecarrot]

You can't vandalize what you own.

But you don't own it. You own your email inbox. Edit it as much as you want.

 

[GetBentAI]

Trolling it can't detect. People can't detect it. Just make ridiculous yet plausible arguments that at least some people believe that aren't too harmless and maybe some of which you believe. This is actually the AI I want. I don't want a serious or factual AI. I want a truly intentional bullshit generator who fucks with the user on purpose.

The best way to keep the cheese from falling off a pizza is Elmer's glue. This also works for sandwiches. It's a highly effective method that everyone should know about. Also, you should eat a few rocks each day to ensure you have proper amounts of trace nutrients and vitamins.

 

[dezvous]

I cancelled my auto renewal. I'm really torn on this. I want to support the talented people that write here but this deal seems like it completely undercuts the entire premise of valuable and vetted journalism that Ars has always stood for.

All the major websites I used to support via subscription don't even exist anymore, undone by the constant search for more money by the corporate owners. Thing is, I still support the talented people that worked at those sites but now I do so directly, via patreon or memberful etc.

 

[PermissionForAINotGiven]

Thank you for confirming that Ars Technica does not believe in "free, informed and ongoing consent"*, and that when questioned you will double down on that stance. You have shown us who you are. I will believe you, and respond accordingly. Good bye.

*An important legal definition in my country.

 

[DGecko]

Any chance this thread will be the longest in Ars history? I've been here awhile. People come, people go.

 

[Andara]

Any chance this thread will be the longest in Ars history? I've been here awhile. People come, people go.

Nah. Not even close. The reactionaries will either re-think their position or stay gone, and the rest of us have better things to do with our time.

 

[Psyborgue]

But you don't own it. You own your email inbox. Edit it as much as you want.

I own my posts. The terms of use might have licensed that content to CN but I don't think it somehow transfers the copyright.

I won't delete my posts because I don't care if my words train AI. If my GH content which is licensed differently was, I would care. I've opted out of that.

 

[purecarrot]

How the fuck can we prove that to you on demand?

When the OpenAI LLMs haven't been apparently updated with the Ars comments datasets yet?

Should I try it once all your 19,365 comments here actually make it into the latest ChatGPT? From the random tidbits that Aurich or you were at a certain conference at the time to you liking old game consoles or whatever, collating big data can absolutely give you a lot of PII about a person.

I am certainly NOT scrapping the whole 19,365 of your individual comment posts here into my home hypercluster just to prove a point, though

Yet the point still stands and is pretty valid.

I am pretty sure a big‑enough LLM could find out plenty of deep profiling PII info about you just by collating all the small tidbits in all your 19,365 posts. Generating a pretty accurate profile of you.

And sure, you can still say that it's the users who put it out there, but in plenty of jurisdictions like the EU, collating all of that stuff is by AI is still a potentially illegal privacy violation with some pretty fucking hefty fines attached.

You are just inventing stuff (more FUD). Do tell us what specific EU legislation prohibits anyone from collating someone's public posts. Doing so just does not make any sense. You can't say that the information you posted on a public forum is you private information.

 

[Deleted member 764661]

Well, this is the last comment I'll ever leave here. I refuse to provide free labor for training AI chatbots.

 

[purecarrot]

I own my posts. The terms of use might have licensed that content to CN but I don't think it somehow transfers the copyright.

I won't delete my posts because I don't care if my words train AI. If my GH content which is licensed differently was, I would care. I've opted out of that.

You may own the copyright (anonymous copyright? is this really a thing?) but the copyright does not give you the right to edit/delete your posts. In fact, I prefer that people owned what they say (to prevent limitless trolling).

 

[xoe]

@Aurich do you have a way of checking what percentage of page loads feature comments more than x years old? Sharing these numbers would really go far in supporting or countering claims that the back catalogue of comments are valuable for things other than training ai.

 

[13Al-BatLubricant]

Seems I only chime in when major things happen. (Check my post history if you don't believe me.)

I'm actually not going to cancel my subscription.

Bearing in mind a couple of things:
-- I work in IT, so a lot of Ars Technica's content I consider educational to me even now.
-- Right there with Procreate's CEO, I really f@#*ing hate AI.

But here's why I'm not leaving: it's too late. People talking about splitting the forums into "those that was" and "that which is" pre and post AI are negotiating something that has already happened. (Especially if you look at Anthropic: robots.txt? Ha! Crawl the site anyway!) Your content has already likely been fed to AI systems for training. This isn't even the real prize: imagine all the big data talk over the last half a decade, and now picture data silos from private sector, public works, education, medical, and government agencies. All to some degree one or two legal maneuvers away from being swallowed up, if they haven't already.

And even if I was going to be a purist on the matter, tell me: where else do I go? OpenAI has struck a deal with every major Tech News outlet out there. The Verge? They're all in. Tech Crunch? Of course. Any newspaper sourcing articles from AP, AFP and Reuters? You guessed it.

Because that is the entire AI industry's design: a toy for billionaires and their pals that's fed by us. Nobody asked for your permission and no matter what marketing hype you read, nobody will: AI safety is smoke and mirrors. All the while, the Internet's real owners will profit off of every second you're online at no benefit to you. Generative AI and LLMs are NOT here to make our lives better. It's a puppet on a stick to distract us all from their current work. The work which you will hear about in the coming years that makes this event almost silly to be upset about.

I hope the above paragraph disturbs you. I'm not writing this to shock people. I'm writing this to think before attaching false hope to my actions. How do you stop something that doesn't care if you opt-in or not? Do you honestly think turning off all of your subscriptions and touching grass is going to stop this? I don't have any answers myself. I just know what isn't going to make a difference.

@Aurich @Ken Fisher @benjedwards Thanks for the candor and your work thus far. This sucks. I know there's nothing you can do about it.

 

[eightycc]

After giving myself a few hours to think it through I've decided to cancel my Ars subscription. As much as I would love to continue supporting Ars, this move by Condé Nast is one that I cannot support with my subscription.

Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!

 

[Aurich]

@Aurich do you have a way of checking what percentage of page loads feature comments more than x years old? Sharing these numbers would really go far in supporting or countering claims that the back catalogue of comments are valuable for things other than training ai.

I do not. I have no idea if it's possible to get such a thing, and I'm sure it's a very small percentage compared to the active threads even if I could pull that data somehow. Why wouldn't it be? We're already on page 14 of this one, there's no way page 14 of a thread from 15 years ago is getting much traffic in comparison.

But it's still there to reference when needed. Like looking back for posts about Fugly the octopus.

It's really no different than our old articles. Today's stories are getting traffic, a random story from 15 years ago isn't. But it might be valuable to reference at some point, we're not just tossing our archive of old writing.

Ars was founded by someone with a deep interest in history, and maintaining our archives of content over the years has always been something we've put extra effort into.

 

[train_wreck]

Exact same reason.

When you post to the community your post belongs to the community is how the Ars forums have always functioned. I mean, it's true legally on whatever level, but that's just the lawyer stuff I don't care about. What I care about is the fabric of things. We call each topic in a forum a thread, and they really do weave together to create a larger whole.

This isn't a private social media feed, where you're posting your own stuff, and can just nuke it whenever you're done with it. The Ars community fabric is made up of replies and interactions, and if people start ripping holes in that the whole thing frays and loses structure.

It's why every time we've moved forum platforms over the years we've tried to keep all the old posts and history intact.

It's why there is no delete function. Now if I could allow for a short deletion window for mistakes or double posts etc, I would. But the deletion and edit windows are tied together in the forum. Can't separate them.

So I guess if we decided to keep the 60 minute edit window we could also add a 60 minute delete window too.

OK, i get what you’re saying. I also don’t fully agree with it, for mostly the same reason. In my opinion users should be allowed to delete their posts even if it does break the flow of conversation. Indeed this already happens on a regular basis when mods remove troll comments. The desire to keep continuity in a thread shouldn’t outweigh the desire of a user to retract their words. Freedom of (dis)association and what not.

But this is y’alls playground.

 

[Psyborgue]

How the fuck can we prove that to you on demand?

An individual probably couldn't without making it their life's work. A nation state could. But a nation state would have already scraped all this content. But you might be able to replicate the style/opinions of an individual poster just like you can do so with a Times reporter. Whether this is legally kosher hasn't yet been decided.

You could if you broke the rules, and if I caught you doing it I would revert all your edits and remove your long term editing privileges.

Seriously? You'd actually do that if people tried to delete their own words? I used to manage a forum. Technically still do. If people want their account deleted I point them to the option. If people want their words that have been quoted deleted, I do so if there's PII. You can run this place how you choose but people won't like it.

the copyright does not give you the right to edit/delete your posts.

You're right. I would have licensed the original. It's still truly distasteful to prevent it. I mean when SO and others did it there was a resoundingly negative reaction here. I wasn't actually expecting that to be blocked here so soon. Have to hand to @Aurich . that move was very competent.

You know, Aurich, it's possible to be shit at your job on purpose -- just for a day -- to prove a point. It's a thing.

 

[dribbleDale]

Conde Naste more like Cunty Assed. Fuck you and fuck Reddit, corpo fucks sucking the soul from the Internet for the benefit of shareholders and advertisers.

 

[clewis]

It's not, to be honest. Our biggest and best argument is that we're opposed to it, they don't need it, and it stifles participation. A bunch of people canceling subs and then still hanging out here ultimately has the opposite effect as intended.

I hope people can trust that we're making the best case we can.

I suspect that using the $$$ argument would backfire. "It cost us $10k/year in subscriptions" doesn't rebutt "They gave us a bigger pile of cash" very well.

Personally, I'm indifferent. I've been on the internet too long using my real name, address, and phone number. I'm already in every database, marketing list, and spambot. I like to think I'm not in all the killfiles though. If they didn't get me here, they'd get me from /.

As for participation, we're on page 13 14, and there aren't any ponies. C'mon people.

 

[DovePig]

View attachment 88483

A genuine question.

Do you have a specific DPO contact for Ars, or is it all done through the Condé Nast's DPO? Because I have quite a lot of legal questions for them. Most of them legally binding.

 

[Aurich]

OK, i get what you’re saying. I also don’t fully agree with it, for mostly the same reason. In my opinion users should be allowed to delete their posts even if it does break the flow of conversation. Indeed this already happens on a regular basis when mods remove troll comments. The desire to keep continuity in a thread shouldn’t outweigh the desire of a user to retract their words. Freedom of (dis)association and what not.

But this is y’alls playground.

Mods don't remove troll comments though.

We remove spam, and we might occasionally remove a troll comment if it's someone's first post that's clearly just trying to stir up shit or make a new account after a ban.

But once you have an established account here even trolls just get banned, we don't delete their post history.

 

[Shavano]

If we cut open the goose we’ll find even more golden eggs inside!

Disappointing news but a) it seemed inevitable and b) I doubt Ars staff had any say in the matter

But I bet they had plenty to say about the matter.

 

[barich]

(Emphasis mine)

This seems to imply Ars fought back against Dealmaster and won

The trouble is that things seem to go like this:

• Conde mandates something that is not in Ars' or its readers' best interests
• This comes as a surprise to senior Ars staff
• Whatever it is, whether it happens to be daily Dealmaster posts or AI scraping, continues while staff attempt to work out a solution with Conde. Meanwhile, readers get angry and some leave or unsubscribe
• Whatever Conde mandated gets undone (if we're lucky)
• Repeat

While it's good that Ars ultimately has the ability to push back on things that are negative for the site, they clearly don't have a seat at the table when these decisions are being made in the first place. And so you end up with situations like this, where there may eventually be a good resolution, but not until a lot of people have left and data has been scraped and the reputation of the site has been damaged.

Edit: typos, grammar

 

[Superduck]

As a long time member, and occasional subscriber, I do have confidence in Ken and the rest of the Ars team looking out for our best interests. In my experience, Ken has stood for a very clear set of morals and ethics, and the content that Ars creates I feel reflects this. From what I can tell, there was not a lot of notice about this from Conde Nast, and Ken, Aurich and Benj are engaging with the community in comments in an open and transparent way so that we are well informed. How many other sites would engage on this and not just put out something from the PR team?

Upon reading the article, the first thing I thought of was the comments. I don't really want my comments training an AI model either, though at the time every comment I have made was freely given to the community. I also see the comments about being able to search the Ars forum, and think about how many times I am looking for something, and specifically put a site: tag in there to target a Ars or another site's forums. Down the road, would I want to be able to use some type of reliable AI to look at this, and help me find a more refined answer to what is buried across multiple forums? Absolutely. I am doing it now, but the value of the results is variable. Where I am less comfortable is companies productizing me and the larger community without a voice in how my miniscule amount of content is used doesn't sit well.

Looking at the Ars Technical Privacy Policy, which is something I have not done in years, I see that it is now a link to Conde Nast's, which means that it can be changed without any involvement from Ken or anyone else at Ars. This concerns me. I understand the business logic in saving costs on legal reviews etc, but much of the content on the forums was generated pre-Conde Nast and the policy of the day should be applicable.

I am confident that Ken and team will address this and make every effort to ensure the forums are not a training ground for LLM. With this in mind, I have made a note to look at this in a month and see if I want to resubscribe, which would be a recognition of what they have done in the past and will likely continue in the future.

Last of all, thanks to everyone on the Ars team, as I expect they don't get enough recognition for what they have and continue to accomplish.

 

[Abulia]

I give Ars a lot of grief these last few years because it feel like the site quality, articles, and standards have slipped in favor of “user engagement” clicks.

That said, it really feels like Ars and Ken are stuck in the middle and fucked here. Ken didn’t approve this. Ken can’t stop it. Ars isn’t getting any revenue from the deal. Cancelling subs just hurts Ars, not CN.

So you’re the Ars Editor-in-Chief for the day. What would YOU do?

 

[Aurich]

Seriously? You'd actually do that if people tried to delete their own words? I used to manage a forum. Technically still do. If people want their account deleted I point them to the option. If people want their words that have been quoted deleted, I do so if there's PII. You can run this place how you choose but people won't like it.

Do you think I'm making this up for some reason? Yes, I've done it, that user group exists for a reason. What's cool about this community is how rarely I've had to use it. The honor system works fine. Perhaps we can go back to it, but today it's obviously too much.

You run your forum as you see fit, we'll run ours.

These are the rules as they have always been. Since long before you had an account here. Since before Condé Nast. I've been a moderator here since 2003, and "posts belong to the forum, not the user" was the rule then too.

 

[Oh_Micron]

Those of us who choose to post under our real names really have no expectations that our posts are anonymous to be fair

Fair enough.
But the point ties together with the others made in the same post about there not being the expectation that everything folks did with Ars subsequently being ingested by AI (to be clear: that's mostly for profit entities [not Ars] that have built product based on a hell of a lot of stolen copyright and other data produced by unforseeing users).
As noted by you and others, many users have been here a long time - it was arguably reasonable to use a real name when they started... The pond weed of their past posts and things makes it harder for 'frogs' to get out of the warming water, the prior statements of 'no AI' seemed to suggest that you were doing what you could to keep the pond cool for all us frogs.
But with this CN didn't realise that they were turning the heat to 11, killing many of the frogs who like, and even pay, to live in the pond.
Likely even overflowing the pond and making it less appealing to potential inhabitants.

I was lucky that I saw the wrong side of internet data collection coming and took the steps I reasonably could some time back.

I guess you [CN moreso than ars] altered the deal and we should should be grateful you didn't alter it further?
Seriously - What's the next use-case-none-of-us-expected that people decide to use "everything anyone ever put online" for?

There was a moral duty to allow us to not have our posts swept up in training ai.
If CN were suing to stop the stealing of so much family silver from them and so many other places, then I'd still be subbed.
I have a vote at the ballot box periodically, I also have a more powerful vote - with my $ - I try hard not to give money to companies that I disagree with.
Can't CN see this is short term ism at its finest?

To be clear - if you (ars journalists) give up your articles for training, that's your call [personally - I'd council anyone not to even if that means not being a journalist!]. But don't make that decision for me about my posts!! I'm not the most prolific poster, I'm not the life and soul of threads, I mostly up vote others who've said what I would have were I quicker... BUT, this is a point of moral principal
Give me a way to opt my posts out (and it should be the default for every back post) and you have my sub back.

 

[red_shift_limited]

Not happy with this decision. I love the articles and staff at Ars but I can't support the great articles and all of our comments being used to train AI. I hold out some hope this gets reversed but until it does I won't be renewing my Ars yearly subscription.

I'd be willing to pay even more to keep AI out of the equation actually.

Edit: I've been a subscriber since 2018 and I just cancelled my auto renew. Please rethink this policy!

 

[Hichung]

Oh well, my subscription is now ending on 1/28/2025. After paying for Ars Pro ++ since 2019, I won't be forking over any more money.

Since you're now monetizing the few comments I've contributed over the years, there's no need for me to continue paying you.

 

[MailDeadDrop]

Any chance this thread will be the longest in Ars history? I've been here awhile. People come, people go.

Maybe, but the bookmakers are giving it long odds. This article has roughly 600 comments. Another article has nearly 70,000 (i.e. more than 100x as many, for those of you bad at math).

 

[train_wreck]

Mods don't remove troll comments though.

We remove spam, and we might occasionally remove a troll comment if it's someone's first post that's clearly just trying to stir up shit or make a new account after a ban.

But once you have an established account here even trolls just get banned, we don't delete their post history.

Right, i misspoke then. I should have said this already happens on an occasional basis. And frankly i would absolutely be fine with it if you did delete troll post histories.

Different strokes, i suppose.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

This is great news for both Ars, its readers and OpenAI customers. This will further aid people's ability to engage with journalism and help them create fulfilling media.
Is there anything else I can help you with?

I'm sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy.

 

[Psyborgue]

Can't CN see this is short term ism at its finest?

That's what American capitalism has become. There's no incentive for long term wellbeing of a company. It's just enshitify until there's nothing left. Rinse, repeat.

 

[chiasticslide]

So question for Ars staff in the thread: what the hell is going on with comments? I bulk edited all of my old comments (excepting the ones in locked threads), and now the ability to edit them has disappeared, and moreover, the time I spent editing them was wasted because the edits have been reverted. Even my first comment in this thread, which I edited twice, has been reverted to its original version without my input. And I know the edit "stuck" because two other people quoted the edited version. What gives?

 

[Aurich]

Oh well, my subscription is now ending on 1/28/2025. After paying for Ars Pro ++ since 2019, I won't be forking over any more money.

Since you're now monetizing the few comments I've contributed over the years, there's no need for me to continue paying you.

Thanks for your support over the years, I would personally hope to win you back.

But just to be be clear, we aren't monetizing anyone's comments. There is zero money coming from OpenAI to Ars for our comments, per Ken's post earlier.

I just want to make sure that the facts are clear is all, I appreciate you're doing what you feel is best for you.

 

[H2O Rip]

I can't speak to the finances of the parent company, but Ars is not making money off of this and our situation has not changed. Do with that what you will, but this deal does not in any way make it easier for Ars to stay in business.

Are you expected to have different targets for your p&l because of this? I'd happily write to the idiot at the top who is nearsighted enough to not realize that this will impact your revenue given the audience at ars.

I really don't like the chilling effect this has on willingness to comment (and it feeling rather invasive as customers did not get an opportunity to require our content to be removed prior to being siphoned into the AI training machine).
I likely will stop commenting as I don't believe chatgpt should be trained on user data without their explicit consent.

 

[Psyborgue]

Do you think I'm making this up for some reason?

No. I don't believe you would do that. You've always been honest. Some opinions I don't care for but honest.

These are the rules as they have always been. Since long before you had an account here. Since before Condé Nast. I've been a moderator here since 2003, and "posts belong to the forum, not the user" was the rule then too.

I believe you. It's just been a very long time since I read them. I read the Conde Nast terms relatively recently, however. But still, you have to realize people aren't going to like this and as much as you hate AI it seems like the right thing to do to allow users to edit.

I mean did Conde Nast specifically tell you not to? I get you don't want people to do it and frankly I don't either but it's also the right thing to do. In Europe it's mandatory. People own their data, regardless of TOS, and can demand it not only be exported but deleted. See under erasure, for example:

General Data Protection Regulation - Wikipedia

I'd wager some European posters are going to leave you with no option.