Washington
CNN
—
The Federal Commerce Fee is wanting into Reddit’s plans to license its platform content material to synthetic intelligence corporations, the social media firm disclosed Friday in a securities submitting.
The disclosure emerged forward of the corporate’s long-anticipated initial public offering, which comes almost 20 years after its launch and is ready to make it the primary social media platform to go public in years.
The FTC despatched Reddit a letter on Thursday outlining the scope of the inquiry, Reddit stated within the filing.
“The FTC’s employees is conducting a private inquiry centered on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content material with third events to coach AI fashions,” Reddit disclosed. “Given the novel nature of those applied sciences and business preparations, we’re not stunned that the FTC has expressed curiosity on this space.”
Reddit added that the corporate doesn’t imagine it has violated US shopper safety regulation.
“The letter indicated that the FTC employees was eager about assembly with us to study extra about our plans and that the FTC supposed to request info and paperwork from us as its inquiry continues,” the corporate stated.
The disclosure got here as an modification to Reddit’s IPO submitting.
The corporate has entered into an agreement to share its platform knowledge with Google in an effort to prepare the tech large’s AI fashions. The deal is said to be worth $60 million per 12 months.
Reddit said earlier this week that it expects to cost shares between $31 and $34 every when it makes its IPO providing. Reddit, together with some present stockholders, plans to supply 22 million shares of the corporate’s Class A inventory, which means the IPO may elevate as a lot as $748 million from these shares, in keeping with a prospectus filed on Monday.