Bluesky's Controversial AI Data Scraping Proposal
Bluesky, a social network, proposed a new system allowing users to opt in or out of having their data used for generative AI training and public archiving. This sparked controversy, with some users accusing Bluesky of breaking its promise not to sell user data to advertisers or use user posts for AI training. CEO Jay Graber responded that generative AI companies already scrape public data, including from Bluesky, and that the platform is trying to create a new standard similar to robots.txt, but without legal enforceability. Users can choose to allow or disallow their data for generative AI, protocol bridging, bulk datasets, and web archiving. While some consider it a good proposal, others worry that scrapers might disregard user preferences.