Tumblr & WordPress reportedly following Reddit in selling user data to AI companies

Popular blogging platforms Tumblr & WordPress are reportedly set to sell user data to train AI models, including ones from OpenAI and Midjourney.

On February 19, 2024, it came out that Reddit was reportedly set to sell user data to an unknown AI company as a way to improve its models.

Users quickly revolted against the news across social media, and just days later, that company was revealed to be Google.

Popular blog platforms Tumblr & WordPress are reportedly set to do the same, according to a report from 404Media, which says they’ve partnered up with OpenAI and Midjourney to do so.

Tumblr & WordPress reportedly selling user data

In the report, 404Media says it talked to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and saw internal documents referring to them as well.

The exact types of data being sold are not made clear in the documentation, but the publication does believe that Automattic (the parent company for Tumblr and WordPress) is about to make a deal with two of AI’s biggest names.

OpenAI and Midjourney are the companies that Tumblr and WordPress are reportedly set to sell user data to, with text powering ChatGPT and images powering Midjourney.

It’s unknown when these deals will be announced, but 404Media says Automattic plans on launching a setting on both platforms that will allow users to opt out of having their content shared.

The report says that if users opt out, they will block crawlers from accessing that user’s content by adding the site to a disallowed list.