Is WeTransfer Using Your Content to Train Its AI?

Perhaps the greatest confidentiality problem of users of our time must of course do with AI. AI models have an insatiable appetite for data, because the only way to improve it is to feed them new high quality information. As such, companies that develop these models are turning to the most practical data pool to which they have access – which, unfortunately, belongs to their own users.

Wetransfer is the last company to have been criticized for practice. You may have already seen the speech. On social media sites like Bluesky, angry Wetransfer users explode the company for a recent change in its conditions of use. It is not difficult to see why: the language in the new terms seems to say clearly that the company reserves the right to use your content to improve its AI models.

“You grant us by this perpetual, global, non -exclusive, free, transferable and license license to use your content for … Improved service or new technologies or services, including to improve the performance of automatic learning models that improve our content moderation process“There are not many other ways to interpret this.

Wetransfer changes his air

Apparently, however, we “misinterpreted” the situation. A wetransfer spokesperson told BBC News, declaring: “We do not use automatic learning or any form of AI to process shared content via Wetransfer, nor to sell content or data to third parties.” Wetransfer claims that the wording in the new service conditions was supposed to “include the possibility of using AI to improve content moderation”, as well as to identify “harmful content”. Of course, January.

After the buttress, the company changed the terms and “made the language easier to understand”. By that, they must mean deleting all references to the use of your content to form AI models, because this language simply does not exist.

Not linked to the use of AI, the original terms also seemed to give Wetransfer the right to do what they want with your content. “Such a license includes the right to reproduce, distribute, modify, prepare derivative work accordingly, disseminate, communicate to the public, publicly display and carry out content. This language has also been modified to what follows:” You grant us by this a free license to use your content for exploitation, development and improvement of the service, all in accordance with our policy of confidentiality and cookie. “

Interestingly, the original language concerning licenses (but not the AI training) appears with regard to the comments you can provide Wetransfer. (Of course, Wetransfer, take a free rights license to do what you want with my comments without expecting to provide compensation. Do not take my content to train your shabby AI.)

Wetransfer’s new terms come into force on August 8, unless you are a “new user”. Time will tell us how many users, old and new, decide to abandon Wetransfer on the scandal.