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Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us? (engadget.com)
31 points by kripy 863 days ago
5 comments

Maybe creators need to write : "This is not allowed for AI to reproduce" in the beginning and then if somebody asks chatgpt to summarize it it could respond with the usual text like : As an AI language model, I am unable to engage with this content...
Maybe the default should be "fuck you, pay me" instead of "megacorporations can do whatever they want".
If some [news] platform invented a way of accepting microtransactions to view each article (instead of subscribing to the entire website, perhaps only to ever view a single article...), I would happily pay.

Bitcoin would be too expensive/slow to process on-the-fly article pageviews, so perhaps some other altcoin could be utilized (browser plugin?) to allow each IP to view for a set duration [1 hour?].

Seems like a way to monetize a service like archive.is &c, and form partnerships with news organizations [instead of ongoing cat-and-mouse hostilities].

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Until then, I'll happily add Arc Search to my repertoire. $$$ I'm not signing up for your entire newspaper, folks.

Brave did that already. Blocked the tracking ads and built an altcoin-backed tipping service whose coins they regularly buy off the market with real money.
How would using crypto be beneficial? Just have a normal company website readers and publishers can sign up for.
Bitcoin Lightning is entirely suited to this use case
>Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?

Under the olde model, it would be the cigar company that made the money.

Every morning in places across Cuba, the cigar rollers would carry on their work, keeping their hands busy while the team orator read the newspaper aloud to them during the day.

Probably the most intelligent ad blocking yet seen goes back to the '50's.

The 1750's at least, maybe even 1550's.

I’m sure this type of thing absolutely scares Engadget who has been putting out ai-like article spam even before generative AI was released.

Call it cynical but these publishers are getting what they deserve. People stopped caring to sift through their content a long time ago.

this should be an existential fear for everyone producing things.

your tech blog you use to get a little clout and bargaining power? it's now only read by AI agents and only a fraction of those agents will attribute you.

so then, whose gonna publish any info, well, now it's propagandists. people who specifically want to seed ideas for some sociological skew

Does anyone know how to block Arc's crawler/Browse For Me from accessing a website?
I feel like Arc is just exposing a problem users have felt for a long time, but has been ignored: most of the web is now spam.

Ads everywhere, deceptive and janky cookie pop ups, low quality click bait journalism lacking substance (ie using hundreds of words to say very little) and publishing platforms charging for that garbage, sites that steal/scrape content and rank higher because of black hat SEO, people inflating content (like recipes, but that's always been a meme I suppose) so there's more breakpoints where ads can be injected, now there's also AI generated posts/articles (don't mean Arc using them to distil content)

The web has become toxic, and Arc just feels like a gas mask.

I use Arc for a few months now, and using this feature recently has been a breath of fresh (or filtered) air. On the other hand I also don't know how I feel about it in the long run. Some of the points in the article make sense, but also how long before Arc gets poisoned itself (which seems inevitable in tech)

The point that Arc isn't really a "gas-mask" so much as it is a "coal-powered air filtration system." It makes your air clean but it poisons the rest of the environment.
tbh; blocking Arc's browser may give a little respite, but using AI enhanced browsing and search is so compelling that it will be everywhere (already elements of it in Edge) and there will be no blocking it.

This is essentialy what Google figured out when ChatGPT turned up; having a business model reliant on the bulk of your ad viewers continuing to use technologies that are 10-100x worse so that they can carry on seeing your ads has zero future.

Similar logic applies to every other website reliant on ads.

Going forward the only viable options appear either paywall, or hope for some form of as yet undecided redistributive pay-per-use arrangement to come through from OpenAI/Google/MS/Apple/Facebook/Government in the way that happened with music.

Interesting times we find ourselves in ...