AI fights for hegemony, Google hoards "data"

Author: Ge Jiaming

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

As one of the three major elements in the development of AI technology, data has always been the focus of the "struggle" of technology giants in this AI "war of the gods".

On July 1, Google updated its privacy policy to make it clear that the company reserves the right to access content users post online to train its artificial intelligence tools.

The update to the Google Privacy Policy reads as follows:

Google will use the information to improve our services and develop new products, features and technologies to benefit our users and the public. For example, we will use publicly available information to help train Google's AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI.

By comparison, we can see that in the previous version of Google's privacy policy, **Google only mentioned that these data will be used for "language models", not "artificial intelligence models". **

Media analysis pointed out that the terms of this privacy policy are very different from the past. Generally speaking, these policies will explain how companies** use the information** posted by users on the company's own servers. But in this one clause, Google seems to reserve the right to collect and utilize all data posted on public platforms, as if the entire Internet is the company's own AI playground.

While previously anyone could see what was posted publicly online, how this information is used is changing. The public's focus on data has shifted from who can access it to how it can be used.

Google's Bard and ChatGPT may have trained themselves on blog posts you've forgotten or restaurant reviews from years ago. Google had no immediate comment on the public's privacy concerns.

Google expresses sincerity to "water sellers"

In addition to Google's users, data providers have become "objects to please" that Google wants to hoard "data".

Data providers are regarded as "water sellers" in the AI era.

Musk doesn't want to be prostituted by AI data, restricting access, causing Twitter to crash. The same is Reddit, an American post bar that doesn't want to be prostituted with data, and the paid API has come. It directly led to the offline of several very popular third-party Reddit apps. This shows how "water sellers" protect their own "water" in the AI era.

**And Google has taken the lead in showing its sincerity to the "water sellers". **The data of the large news publishers is naturally the first focus.

Copyright discussions around AI have continued in recent months, exacerbating already strained relations between big tech companies and the publishing world. Google took the lead in expressing its willingness to pay for news content.

The media quoted an executive of a newspaper group as saying that Google has drawn up an agreement and is willing to pay for news content in the future:

AI fights for hegemony, Google hoards "data" "Google has established a licensing agreement, and they are willing to accept the principle that payment is required to purchase content, but we have not discussed the amount. Google said that it will negotiate the amount in the next few months, This is the first step."

In response to the report, Google clarified that reports about the licensing deal were "inaccurate," adding that "it's early days and we're continuing to work with the ecosystem, including news publishers, to get their input."

According to Google, it is in "continuous dialogue" with news organizations in the US, UK and Europe, while its AI tool, Bard, is being trained on "publicly available information", which may include paid websites.