Tumblr and WordPress are reportedly set to strike deals to sell user data to artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Midjourney. 404 Media reports that the platforms’ parent company, Automattic, is nearing completion of an agreement to provide data to help train the AI companies’ models.
It isn’t clear which data will be included, but the report suggests Automattic may have overreached initially. An alleged internal post from Tumblr product manager Cyle Gage suggests Automattic prepared to send private or partner-related data that wasn’t supposed to be included in the deal. The questionable content reportedly included private posts on public blog posts, deleted or suspended blogs, unanswered (therefore, not publicly posted) questions, private answers, posts marked explicit and content from premium partner blogs (like Apple’s former music site).
The internal post suggests Automattic’s engineers are preparing a list of post IDs that should have been excluded. It isn&rsqu