The New York Times, CNN and The Guardian are some of the media outlets that have chosen to block OpenAI – the company behind Chat GPT, reports The Guardian. This means that the AI is no longer allowed to retrieve information from articles, images or metadata to train its tools.
The hope is to counteract the spread of misinformation and protect copyright.
Aftonbladet joins in
Aftonbladet is the only major Swedish media company that has chosen to block the AI companies' data collection.
– We made a decision a few days ago that we, temporarily anyway, block this type of spider from scratching our content, says Martin Schori, deputy editorial director at Aftonbladet.
It is the lack of dialogue with companies and the lack of transparency that lie behind the position. At the same time, Schori believes that the issue is not straightforward. There is a risk that only alternative media will become source material.
"One might ask what would actually happen if we, and others, perhaps all established media, were to choose to opt out of these chatbots?
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SVT has not yet decided.
– As far as Public Service is concerned, we at SVT have not put our foot down yet. We want to be a reference point in a noise of information where it is sometimes difficult to know if it is true and false," says Executive Vice President Anne Lagercrantz.
In an open letter from the beginning of August, several media outlets demanded transparency in the AI companies' activities. Anne Lagercrantz takes a similar line of reasoning.
"As a publisher, I want greater openness and transparency. Today, there is a lot we cannot know, including how this "AI scraping" takes place.
KulturNyheter has been in contact with several media. Expressen and Dagens Nyheter reply that they are waiting on the issue. Sveriges Radio and Svenska Dagbladet have not responded.