this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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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 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

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
[–] Keening@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

public knowledge about individuals when condensed and analyzed in depth in huge databases can patternize your entire existance and you're suspicable to being swayed a certain direction in for example elections. Creating further divide and into someone elses pockets.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe but I can’t object too much if I put my content out in public. When forced to create an account I use minimal/false information and a unique generated email. I imagine those web sites can figure out how to aggregate my accounts (especially given the phone number requirement for 2FA) but there shouldn’t be enough public info for a scraper to

[–] Keening@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Gotta think larger than yourself though. What happens when your spouse uses real info? your kids? your parents? they'll shadowplay your person with great accuracy and fill in the gaps. You don't even have to "put content" out there. Said databases can just put two and two together. How will you, or other uses even know you're actually talking to a human? perhaps you're on Lemmy and we're all bots trying to get you to admit fragments of your latest crimes in order to get you into jail for said crime? etcetera. At first glance this all looks harmless but any accumulated information in huge databases is a major infringement to personal integrety at best; and complete control of your freedom at worst. The ultimate power is when someone can make you do X or Y and you don't even realize you're doing their bidding; but believe you have a choice when you don't. (Similiar to how it is in my living situation at home with my gf that is :P jk.)

Hakuna matata. Happy new year

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

I completely agree, except that I think of them as multiple related privacy issues. In the scope of ai bots scraping my public content, most of these are out of scope

[–] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

What did you mean by "police" your content?

[–] weststadtgesicht@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not the person you are replying to but Reddit does not make the content you created available for everyone (blocking crawlers, removing the free API) but instead sells it to the highest bidder.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Right, that’s my objection. After benefitting from my content, they police it, as in restrict other sites from seeing it, until it’s monetized. It’s not Reddits to charge money for

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Probably not the right word, but my content should still be my content. I offered it to Reddit but that doesn’t mean they have the right to charge others for it or restrict it to others for commercial reasons.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 days ago

sites like Reddit whose entire existence is due to user content, deciding they can police and monetize my content. They have no right

Um, not they do in fact have "every right" here. It's shitty of course but you explicitly gave them that right in form of an perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide etc. license to do whatever they like to everything you publish on their site.

They also have every right to "police" your content, especially if it's objectionable. If you post vile shit, trolling or other societal garbage behaviour on the internet, nobody wants to see it.

[–] biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago

It seems quite inevitable that AI web crawlers will catch all of us eventually, although that said, I don't think perplexity knows that I've never interacted with szmer.info, nor said YES as a single comment.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No matter how I feel about it, it's one of those things I know I will never be able to do a fucking thing about, so all I can do is accept it as the new reality I live in.

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've been thinking for a while about how a text-oriented website would work if all the text in the database was rendered as SVG figures.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not very friendly to the disabled?

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Aside from that. Accessibility standards are hardly considered even now and I'd rather install a generated audio version option with some audio poisoning to mess with the AIs listening to it.

[–] sarahduck@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days 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.

[–] NostraDavid@programming.dev 9 points 6 days ago

I think this is inevitable, which is why we (worldwide) need laws where if a model scrapes public data should become open itself as well.

[–] Grail@aussie.zone 5 points 6 days ago
[–] ooli@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Could lemmy add random text only readable by bot on every post.. or should I add it somehow myself every time I type something?

spoiler

growing concern over the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. This event marked the beginning of what would soon become a global pandemic, fundamentally altering the course of 2020 and beyond.

As reports began to surface about a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, health officials and scientists scrambled to understand the nature of the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) was alerted, and investigations were launched to identify the source and transmission methods of the virus. Initial findings suggested that the virus was linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, raising alarms about zoonotic diseases—those that jump from animals to humans.

The situation garnered significant media attention, as experts warned of the potential for widespread transmission. Social media platforms buzzed with discussions about the virus, its symptoms, and preventive measures. Public health officials emphasized the importance of hygiene practices, such as handwashing and wearing masks, to mitigate the risk of infection.

As the world prepared to ring in the new year, the implications of this outbreak were still unfolding. Little did anyone know that this would be the precursor to a global health crisis that would dominate headlines, reshape societies, and challenge healthcare systems worldwide throughout 2020 and beyond. The events of late December 2019 set the stage for a year of unprecedented change, highlighting the interconnectedness of global health and the importance of preparedness in the face of emerging infectious diseases.

[–] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Interesting question... I think it would be possible, yes. Poison the data, in a way.

[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Its not fine when Ai starts scrapping Data that is Personal (Like Face,Age,ID) And My Source Code(Because Most of the code ai scraps are copyleft or require attribution),Public Information Am Okay like Comments,Etc that dont contain the things said above.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago

Whatever I put on Lemmy or elsewhere on the fediverse implicitly grants a revocable license to everyone that allows them to view and replicate the verbatim content, by way of how the fediverse works. You may apply all the rights that e.g. fair use grants you of course but it does not grant you the right to perform derivative works; my content must be unaltered.

When I delete some piece of content, that license is effectively revoked and nobody is allowed to perform the verbatim content any longer. Continuing to do so is a clear copyright violation IMHO but it can be ethically fine in some specific cases (e.g. archival).

Due to the nature of how the fediverse, you can't expect it to take effect immediately but it should at some point take effect and I should be able to manually cause it to immediately come into effect by e.g. contacting an instance admin to ask for a removed post of mine to be removed on their instance aswell.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

You're aware that it's in their best interest to make everyone think their """AI""" can execute advanced cognitive tasks, even if it has no ability to do so whatsoever and it's mostly faked?

Taking what an """AI""" company has to say about their product at face value in this part of the hype cycle is questionable at best.

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

You're aware that it's in their best interest to make everyone think their """AI""" can execute advanced cognitive tasks, even if it has no ability to do so whatsoever and it's mostly faked?

Are you sure you read the edits in the post? Because they say the exact contrary; Perplexity isn't all powerful and all knowing. It just crawls the web and uses other language models to "digest" what it found. They are also developing their own LLMs. Ask Perplexity yourself or check the documentations.

Taking what an """AI""" company has to say about their product at face value in this part of the hype cycle is questionable at best.

Sure, that might be part of it, but they've always been very transparent on their reliance on third party models and web crawlers. I'm not even sure what your point here is. Don't take what they said at face value; test the claims yourself.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago

Especially now that we know that the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is to declare that an AGI had been developed once a system makes over $100 billion in profits.

https://gizmodo.com/leaked-documents-show-openai-has-a-very-clear-definition-of-agi-2000543339

They do not give a shit about the reality of their product.

[–] vox@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Not Perplexity specifically; I'm taking about the broader "issue" of data-mining and it's implications :)

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 118 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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 40 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 46 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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 14 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".

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[–] will_a113@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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[–] platypode@sh.itjust.works 15 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.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 14 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.

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