🔗 “Wait, not like that”: Free and open access in the age of generative AI

A well written essay from Molly White about how the dangers of locking down sites from AI bots could affect the free and open nature of online resources. She provides some alternatives near the end. I remain skeptical about how effective these could be. For one, legal enforcement is only effective in the jurisdictions they’re enforced in, and there are a lot of those in this world. For another, there’s significant money backing these AI services, and given that such companies have ignored such licenses in the past, what’s to say they won’t ignore them now? To her credit, she does acknowledge this.

It’s not like I have any answers either. This just reeks of a collective action problem through-and-through. Wishing that these AI companies would recognise that their parasitic relationship with individual creators is not sustainable is the best I got, which is not much.

Via: Manton Reece