SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Reddit announced Friday that the Federal Trade Commission will investigate the social media platform's sale, licensing and sharing of user posts and other content to outside organizations for use in training artificial intelligence models. It was reported that it had started.
The company disclosed its investigation Friday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, citing a letter from the FTC dated Thursday.
“Given the novel nature of these technologies and commercial arrangements, we are not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest in this area,” Reddit wrote in its filing. “We do not believe that we have engaged in unfair or deceptive trade practices.”
Like many other social media platforms, Reddit has expressed interest in business deals in which AI companies pay to access databases of human-written text. AI models can be used to hone their ability to converse, answer questions, and create text and images on demand.
Almost a month ago, Reddit announced a $60 million deal with Google to do just that. The deal gives Reddit access to Google AI models to improve search and other features on the site. Reddit declined to comment or respond to questions beyond a written statement about the deal.
Friday's disclosure comes as Reddit prepares to sell stock to the public for the first time. The San Francisco-based company filed documents Monday estimating an initial public offering price that values the 18-year-old platform at up to $6.4 billion.
