Has Mumsnet recently opened its doors to searches by ChatGPT and other AI tools?

[uncleer]

Several months ago I noticed that ChatGPT could reproduce and generate content from Reddit but not from Mumsnet. More recently it seems to be able to generate content from Mumsnet. For example, if I say "Can you find examples of parents discussing school X online?" or "Can you summarise all posts from Mumsnet user Y on topic Z?" then it will happily do it.

When was this change made, and how was it communicated to users?

I’ve been able to do that with ChatGPT for months.

However - it doesn’t really matter as they don’t need to ‘communicate’ it to users. It’s an internet site on the World Wide Web. Available to all, human or bot! 😁

It definitely has allowed it for ages as even a year ago I was saying "find me opinions from mumsnet on X and summarise". I think it maybe just hadnt tailored its responses to you as a user, reddit maybe the default but mumsnet for people who are more likely to use it.

AI has always been able to search Mumsnet? Not sure how you think any site is able to stop that? I know Mumsnet tried to take a stand against this a couple of years ago but it's impossible.

I don't think it has. I tried it a few months ago and it didn't work. But that was before Mumsnet forced "free" users to use cookies. I asked it to summarise posts from a specific user and it said it couldn't, but was able to give me examples of people discussing that mumsnet user on Reddit.

Any website can be designed to block AI. One way is to put content behind a paywall - to be fair, Mumsnet does have that option. There are other ways too, though none are guaranteed.

Presumably MNHQ gets revenue from the features that enable the trawling.

It’s been able to search MN for as long as I’ve been using AI (a long time!) MN is not locked behind a login, it’s publicly searchable. That’s why when you search in google a related thread can come up, and why the site is awash with AI posts now because AI has always had enough scraped content to write MN sounding threads.

I'm of the mind, if you use AI then you don't get to moan about it.

If nobody used the damned thing, it would be better.