Vimeo says a firm ‘no’ to AI data-scraping

Popular video platform Vimeo has issued a statement committing to filmmakers that it will not allow AI data scraping from its site. Vimeo carried out a survey of its user base last month to determine the overall feelings about AI within the filmmaking creative community.

The survey found that many such people were concerned about several aspects of AI (no surprise there!). These include the unauthorised use of copyrighted work to train the data machines and the protection of intellectual property.

Say no to data scraping

“Vimeo will not allow generative AI models to be trained using videos hosted on our platform without your explicit consent, even if you use our free offerings,” says Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer in the statement. “In addition, we prohibit unauthorized content scraping (by model companies) and continue to implement security protocols designed to protect user-generated content,” he adds.

This is good news, especially as Vimeo, like many other platforms, is beginning to incorporate the use of AI tools into the platform. I don’t think most people have an issue with this use of AI, it is inherently another tool to be used to get the job done.

What we are all concerned about, however, is AI’s more insidious side, which is essentially stealing our work and potentially making us redundant in the long run.

Key commitments

The statement continues to outline Vimeo’s key commitments to the creative video community. These include protecting creative rights, transparency and control, and community feedback. Essentially, Vimeo is allowing an open-loop dialogue and discussion around the topic, which can only benefit everybody.

It has come to light in recent months that some of the biggest companies in generative AI have indeed been data-scraping from platforms such as YouTube and other stock photo sites without consent or permission. OpenAI’s Sora wowed us all with what it could do video-wise. However, that was rather less than impressive when we discovered that it had trained the AI on YouTubers’ content, breaking all the terms and conditions. Google it seems, didn’t really care.

We now know that large sums of money have changed hands in return for training content, none of which has made its way to the creators or artists who made that content. Once again, artists and photographers are getting royally screwed by the tech-bros and content platforms.

So, I applaud Vimeo for taking this stance. Let’s see if their actions match their words.

[via lightstalking]

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