Photobucket is in Negotiations With AI Companies to Licence 13 Billion Images

[usonian]

So, they changed their terms of service on the users, presumably without asking. Does this mean that everyone who uploaded photos there, including family photos, is now grist for the A.I. mill?

CEO Ted Leonard tells Reuters that he is in talks with “multiple tech companies” to license the website’s 13 billion photos and videos, earmarked for training text-to-image models. Leonard says he can do this because last October the company changed its terms of service to grant it “unrestricted rights” to sell any uploaded content for the purpose of AI training.

...

The news that Photobucket is considering selling users’ content to generative AI comes amid reports that large tech companies like OpenAI and Google are running out of data to harvest for AI products.

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But is it Even Legal?
Daniela Braga, CEO of Defined.ai, a company that licenses data to big tech firms, tells Reuters that she avoids acquiring content from platforms such as Photobucket because the licensing rights are murky.

“I would find it very risky,” Braga says. “If there’s some AI that generates something that resembles a picture of someone who never approved that, that’s a problem.”

More at PetaPixel.
https://petapixel.com/2024/04/08/photobucket-is-in-negotiations-with-ai-companies-to-licence-13-billion-images/

[getagrip_already]

1. of course, you don't really think it's a "free" service, do you?

Storage and networking costs real money. You used those resources and agreed to terms of service.

They own the rights to everything you uploaded, from pg to xxx.

Sorry. But yeah, it sucks.

Welcome to capitalism.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. It's a terrible thing to say, but I don't care what they do with the images I left there.

I haven't used them in decades!

[usonian]

3. I worry about what happens to photos of people in the great A.I. transformer.

I've read some horror stories, and there is criminal prosecution ongoing for abuse.

People have been making fakes for a long time, but A.I. not only automates it, but puts it in the hands of anyone.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. That's true. It's an angle I hadn't thought about. nt

[TeamProg]

5. "If there's some AI that generates something that resembles a picture of someone who never approved that, that's a

problem"

Sure, but how often would anyone FIND OUT?

Even your close relatives aren't going to call you up and say "Hey Cuzzin', I just saw a video of you advertising AR-15s while killing puppies, why did you do that?"

Your cousin will just think that you've lost your mind and never bring it up. Most people avoid confrontation.

Photobucket SUCKS!

[usonian]

6. It's going to proliferate.

I already found some doppelgängers (real ones, not AI) of myself.

There's a Linux guy from the past , and of course, Jeff Goldblum. Especially in Independence Day.

I am working on the six pack he sported in The Fly, but not the eventual hairdo.

Now, please pass the sugar, lots of it.

With the AI explosion, it will take over the internet almost entirely. I keep reading posts that are a pastiche of who knows what, and the biblical flood of trash books on Amazon is startling and well known. In fact, I believe that the flood of fakery on the internet will cause a mass exit faster than a fart in a phone booth would cause (if we had phone booths any more)

King Amazon is morally (sic) wounded.

I have been posting on Hacker News that my forward looking ideas of the past decade are now ready to blossom.

Stay tuned. The current internet is going away like your trash bucket, or if you live in the woods, faster than a raccoon through your trash.