Feeding the zoo animals (Site Stuff)

[BridgetYourFortyDaysAreUp]

Sorry about the weird thread title; it's deliberate.

I thought everyone on FWR should be aware of this thread on Site Stuff (not everyone looks at Site Stuff).

It concerns what you put in your draft posts before you hit "Post."

More specifically, for a good summary, see

LemonDog45 at 22.11 yesterday

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5585556-odd-ai-generated-thread-title-options-in-site-stuff?page=9

And JustineMumsnet response at 16.29 today

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5585556-odd-ai-generated-thread-title-options-in-site-stuff?page=10

Make of that what you will. Justine says Mumsnet opted out of allowing OpenAI to use our draft posts. Would you believe OpenAI if they said, "ok, thanks for the info, we won't use the draft posts"?

This thread may get deleted, but, for now, I would avoid typing/C&Ping anything identifying or personal into your draft posts, even if you intend to delete it before posting, because it looks as though OpenAI may be scraping your draft posts as it generates titles and even possible responses. Before you actually post.

Might explain some of the weird, relentless posts we've had on FWR lately. Or maybe there really are just quite a few bored people around at the moment.

I'm afraid, from reading the Site Stuff thread, it does appear that it's "for another purpose." Someone reminded us about the new CEO and the income-generating nature of MN. AI is where the money is at the moment.

Remind me, who does MN share a director with?

Report in the Guardian now.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/oct/07/mumsnet-denies-using-ai-for-content-message-board-prompt

Thanks @Ereshkigalangcleg

And this, people, is why you should never put anything remotely identifiable in your draft posts!

Not only will it be scraped, but you'll end up in The Guardian as well.

That's quite a lot of denial from MN!

Wow, thank you for this! Despite having Site Stuff listed under My Feed, I rarely get to see Site Stuff unless a thread explodes. Another techy MN win🙄

I'm feeling very unsettled knowing my words/thoughts have zipped across the internet before I have decided to actually release them by posting. They need to get the f* outta ma brain 😠

This was my concern. The ‘service improvement’ angle is disingenuous sleight of hand obscuring the corporate motive.

The generating fake posts is perhaps a separate problem (or may be entirely connected?), but that was another worry. I instantly thought about the FWR pile-on of threads from new usernames lately. AI-generated? Some of them have been "traced" but the others...?

Apparently no, this doesn't happen, according to Justine, but honestly, I don't think they have a handle on this AI stuff at all.

I work in Notes (or similar) then, when I'm ready, C&P everything in one go into a post. Then think of a title and preview and check links. No personal data, or even personal musings.

However, I can't tell you the number of times I drafted a rebuttal to one of our resident "Visitors" before thinking, oh, I can't be bothered getting involved, and I'll just get reported, so just delete the whole thing. Interesting that some of that might be out there in the AI ether! 😁

Thanks for sharing this; I hadn’t seen the other thread.

I’m now wondering if this is the reason I’ve started getting email updates from ChatGPT. I’ve never used it in my life so I’ve been wondering where they got my email address from

It’s OpenAI they’re using.

eta ignore me, I forgot that chat gpt is theirs

Interesting - same here! I never use it and am now getting emails from them.

I’m only seeing this thread for the first time now, and the thread linked to at the top of the thread has been deleted. This is really unhelpful as I think all posters should be able to read the thread and the MN response, so we are fully informed about the issue. I’d like to see a pinned AI policy at the top of each subject area of the forum so MN can transparently tell users how their data might be collected and used, including draft posts given what we have learned. But this move, to delete the thread, seems to be designed to obscure rather than reveal. Not a great look.

Yes appreciate this isn't the focus of this thread, but given how many threads just seem duplicates, and some posters who pop up on these threads make posts seem to be the same 5 responses they just use in some random way, it does make you wonder!

My confidence in the forum is more that a bit diminished I have to say.

Maybe we can have another thread based on Traitors or one of those shows (I know nothing about!) and see if there is some sort of AI going on.

Sorry - this is totally off topic, but maybe not.

I added a post to an existing thread about Sex Matters being nominated for an award.

The post has been deleted as apparently MNHQ thinks it is dubious or something.

Must have been only about 5 minutes after posting.

As posted yesterday the tool used is NOT linked to the public AI tool.

This is the business version that doesn't do that. Although does hold info for 30 days.

But then given MN's technical glitches maybe somebody didn't install it correctly.

More and more I am beginning to think this is about creating false posts.

From the Guardian article;

It faced a 19% drop in its monthly unique user numbers in 2025 to 6.1 million and the number of posts fell by 600,000.

So rather than trying to enhance the uniqueness of different parts of MN they are going for the any old garbage that encourages the usual suspects to post on forums is okay.

Edited to add

I think you will find that sloppy as Guardian reporters are they are capable of reading site stuff - it is the the public domain.

MN is read by journalists to find comments on any of the forums they can turn into shouty headlines.

Just to confirm , at the time of posting this, the Site Stuff thread is still active.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5585556-odd-ai-generated-thread-title-options-in-site-stuff?page=11

randomchap · Today 20:42
Another really good summary of current concerns.

If the other thread does disappear, I imagine so will this one pretty quickly.

I am a former software engineer and a heavy user of Claude.ai and previously ChatGPT, owned by OpenAI, and I pay for a Pro subscription for Claude and used to pay for ChatGPT (both about £20 a month). I am married to a software consultant for IBM whose job is to use AI , both IBM's specific AI, and other models, and who advises many other developers in IBM on using AI for IBM's clients.

My understanding is that when users opt out of training AI models, which I do and which I recommend all users do, then the prompts and responses put into AI are not scraped by the owners. If they did, this would be a serious betrayal of user trust and also GDPR, breaking a lot of laws in the EU.

I also understand that business who use AI and install it for their systems, like Copilot etc, are automatically opted out of scraping to train other models and cannot opt in. Again this would be a serious breakdown of business trust, particularly where business have sensitive legal, financial and market information. I have seen nothing that tells me that the AI companies are lying when they say this.

More importantly, were the AI companies found to scrape company data to train their models, the money would dry up very quickly because no company would use AI ever again.

Therefore I do not think that anything that MN users have typed into their responses has been scraped by AI to go back to OpenAI.

Having said all of this, I do find it very worrying, that AI "watches" as users type. Presumably this only applies to posts that create new threads, but it is concerning that this is how it is set up. However, in thinking about how the AI generated thread title works, I am unsure how else it might generate a title, particularly if the title is automatically generated before posting. I have only generated two threads since this came in, so I can't speak for how it works and only have other people's word for it.

I do think though, that MN could operate an AI-generated title by having a button to click, which says, "Generate a thread title". It would mean, no text is sent to OpenAI to generate a thread until the button is clicked. Obviously users should still have an option to write their own title if they don't like what is generated.

If it were an option that users had to undo in Settings, then many people would never see it and would be concerned.

As for the text that was generated by AI that was published on the Site Stuff thread, this is what AI does. If it is reading as a post is typed then it may assume that the poster is writing a prompt that will seek a response to what is being said,. The AI mdoel may not know until the poster selects post, or the option to generate a title (unsure of the mechanism).

AI will generate instructions to itself to say "do not reply like this", "consider this aspect of the post". This behaviour is not controllable by MN. I shout at Claude so often that it will say while "thinking" - how to generate a calm response to a frustrated prompt, so this type of language is normal for AI to use.

It may also be considering general instructions given by MN so that a generated title does not victim-blame.

I do think it needs to be fixed and I do think that users are right to ask questions and understand what is going on. I also agree that MN really need to get better at saying, we are looking into this and while we know it is difficult to have to wait, we will take the time necessary to find out what is happening rather than give you the wrong information.

But on the point that the AI title generation tool is scraping our posts and sending them to OpenAI, I am confident that isn't happening.

But AI from all countries and makers is probably still scraping every public forum it can get into and it's difficult to know what to do about that. Though, given how male-coded AI models are, maybe scraping 20 years of women talking to each other on the internet might make it less infuriating.

@MyrtleLion

But on the point that the AI title generation tool is scraping our posts and sending them to OpenAI, I am confident that isn't happening.

Ok, thanks for that comprehensive explanation. It would have been useful if Justine had said all this on the Site Stuff thread, but there has been nothing like this kind of response. If MN know all this, why not reassure us?

I hope you are right. But, I shall continue to be cautious about what I put in my drafts.

You’re welcome.

I am not sure that it has been comprehensively explained to Justine and the MNHQ team.

There is a lot of scaremongering about AI and its ability to destroy humanity, including from the big AI companies.

I will explain more later today but I have to go out now. Essentially, they want to shut out smaller competitors, drive up the value of their companies and reduce their debt.

AI won’t kill humanity, but just as computers and automatic weapons won’t kill us on their own, in the hands of bad actors AI can be used for harm.

Thanks For checking it’s appearing now, but I can assure that at the time I was on this thread before and posted that it had been taken down, both the links in that post were not working - clicking them took me to an ‘oops’ error page, saying that page was lost down the back of the sofa. I wonder if they were taken down temporarily while some of the content was edited?

Thanks for confirming that. They do sometimes take threads down "to take a look." Perhaps that's what happened?

Update, in case you haven't seen it on Site Stuff (this is just one part of a longer update from Justine):

JustineMumsnet · Today 13:01

"Hi all,
Some answers to the questions that have come up since my last post.

First, on the prompt tool to be clear we’re no longer sending any draft text to OpenAI. When we switched title suggestions off, we stopped sending anything, not just stopped showing the suggestion.

When the tool was operational, all that was sent was the text of the draft and the topic, to generate a title. [my bold] No usernames, email addresses or account details were included, and OpenAI doesn’t use this data to train its models...."

I would like to feel reassured by that response. Somehow I'm not.

However, perhaps posters who are more knowledgeable can give us their thoughts, as MyrtleLion did.

First, on the prompt tool to be clear we’re no longer sending any draft text to OpenAI. When we switched title suggestions off, we stopped sending anything, not just stopped showing the suggestion.

I don't see what Justine or MN has to gain by lying about this. And if they turned off the title suggestions (which is easily checkable), then they stopped sending things. I would say this is absolutely fine. And while to some it might feel like an overreaction, it is proportionate to the anger expressed about it.

MN runs on trust and confidence, and if we stop posting or using MN because they have used /are using AI, then that directly eats into their profits and commercial model. They rely on our eyeballs on their advertisments or paid subscriptions to make their money. If we stop using MN they lose money, hence them being very responsive to criticism.

When the tool was operational, all that was sent was the text of the draft and the topic, to generate a title. [my bold] No usernames, email addresses or account details were included, and OpenAI doesn’t use this data to train its models...."

I also think this is true. MN has a paid business subscription to AI and as I said above, it the AI companies started using the content generated under a business subscription to train AI, it would result in businesses stopping using AI in case their legal, financial or private information was leaked. Imagine a solicitor using AI to write template letters and private information about divorce, court cases, employment negotiations, redundancies being leaked, no-one would use those lawyers again.

As an aside I found that some lawyers submitted an update to a legal document that used the wrong version of the document - so instead of updating v2 to v3, they updated v1 instead, missing out legally agreed amendments to v2. They now have to redo all the work on to v2 for free, and get legal agreements again so that v3 includes all of v2 for free. This is another six months' work all for free, and the work they did on making adding v3 to v1 will not be paid. Then they will be sacked and their reputation over a silly little cock-up on version control will be trashed. Just because no-one checked.

So imagine that AI had done that (it definitely wasn't AI in this case) there would be huge lawsuits. And if that AI had been used to train the rest of the AI models worldwide, there would be even bigger huge lawsuits. Same as if sensitive information was used that meant there could be insider trading. So it is definitely true that a business subscription will not train other models.

Equally, sending usernames or email addresses or other account details would not be necessary (assuming the OP of the thread doesn't mention these details in the post). There is no need to send the information when it's just to generate a title.

All that would be sent would be the topic - AIBU/Feminism:Sex and Gender/Parenting/Breastfeeding etc and the text of the draft - AIBU that I insist on everyone in the house removes their shoes because they traipse in the dirt and it's unhygienic etc?

Again I see no reason for MN to lie about this. They have been trying to provide a service to support users.

I think now that some of the "invisible magic" has become visible, some users are unhappy and didn't realise exactly how the AI title generator worked. And that is absolutely justified. And to be fair to MNHQ, maybe they didn't entirely understand exactly what was involved in the secret sauce either.

The following is clear to me what happens -

1. The topic of a new post that starts a thread and the text drafted in that new post is sent to OpenAI, as it is typed.
2. OpenAI may speculate to itself, as the thread is typed, how to reply as if that text is a prompt for it to answer.
3. When the user is ready to generate a title, OpenAI suggests a title based only on 1 and 2 above. It does not generate a response.
4. No other information is sent to OpenAI
5. OpenAI does not use this information to train its AI models, including the model used by MN.

I think the following questions remain -

1. Now that users know that this is how it works, are they happy to continue using the AI thread title generator as it stands?
2. If they are not happy with this way of working, would they be happy if the information wasn't sent as they were drafting, but only on the click of a button to generate a title?
3. If they are not happy with 1 or 2 above, should MN stop using the AI title generator altogether?
4. MN uses AI for other purposes such as automatically checking images and hiding some posts that trigger a spam/inappropriate content filter until a human can check them - should MN continue to use AI to do this?
5. MN probably uses AI for other business purposes that don't directly affect users, such as financial reporting, making summary reports on usage statistics etc, and should they continue to use AI for business purposes other than content moderation or title generation?

Frankly I think that point 5 is none of our business and I am sure that many businesses we use every day are using AI for these purposes and users and consumers don't get a say.

Point 4 is our business, and following the pornography-bombing that severely disrupted MN before they brought it in, I for one, think it is very useful, and if MN didn't use AI then we would either not be able to post images, or they would take ages to be approved. And content moderation has affected me a couple of times, but generally I have reported my next post to MN and it has unhidden the flagged posts very quickly.

I am not unhappy about point 1, but I wasn't aware and I can see that it bothers some users and may restrict how they use MN to start threads, and some users may leave.

I would be much happier if the title generator worked as laid out in point 2, if that is in fact possible. And that would also mean that if users didn't want to use the title generator, then none of their draft posts would be sent to OpenAI at all.

But I can also see some users might not be happy with that either. Would that be enough users who might leave or express their unhappiness that it affects MN's bottom line? Only they can say, but if it does, then they may implement point 3 and stop using the AI title generator.

Ultimately it is a business decision for MN because a drop in users and subscribers will affect their profits. But mostly right now, MN's reputation has taken a bit of a bashing and that may be more of an immediate issue. I think improving communication and being as transparent as possible is their only option at the moment, and part of that is removing the AI title generator immediately (as they have already done) while they discuss it.

I do think a lot of people are worred and suspicious of AI for many reasons and I hope this helps users think about what is happening and how they feel about MN's usage of AI.

I am happy to answer questions on how AI works in general if that will help, too.

As a quick summary AI is just a sophisticated predictor of text, like the sugggestions you get when texting on your phone. It is really good at recognising patterns and really good at generating very average text based on the internet of the last 30 years.

Most of the internet content has been written by men (because they dominate and force women off the web by shaming and threatening them). This means if you ask AI about heart attack symptoms, it will give you those for men, not women. It means it will reassure you that everything is fine when you show it a nasty skin infection, even when it isn't (me last year with a severe MSSA infection, my husband this week with a nasty infected cyst). It means it will tell you that you're the greatest in a way that makes women sceptical and that men lap up. It will not offer you comfort or an apology when it gets something wrong and you can feel gaslit.

Don't rely on it for truth, check everything it gives you, particularly if it quotes medical, legal or financial information. As Google AI just told me, "AI fails when it is forced to replace the core human element. It lacks genuine reasoning, emotional empathy, and true situational context. Using it to completely automate human relationships—like writing personal messages, evaluating job candidates autonomously, or offering unverified medical or legal advice—frequently backfires"

But if you want it to give you high speed pattern recognition like detecting cancer in 1,000 mammograms, or detecting fraudulent bank transactions, or modelling scientific research it is very good.

And it excels at tedious text analysis and data transformation. It is brilliant at summarising that 40 page document you really don't want to read. It will generate repetitive boilerplate code, and hunt down spelling, punctuation and grammar issues in your own wrtiing. And it will also generate real-time, context-aware translations beyond word-for-word substitution by workign out what is intended.

It is in essence a useful but quite broken typewriter. I still swear at it every single day because it really is quite rubbish, but at the same time when I am writing a long paper on why certain rules are necessary and how they've been broken, it is rigorous at keeping me to the text rather than speculating about why a company has broken the rules - because in my field it doesn't matter why, it just matters that the rules have been broken.

I try and think of it like a useful but broken typewriter. In ten years we will have worked out what it is good at, and that's what we will mostly use it for.

@MyrtleLion Those are two really excellent posts. Would it be possible for you to copy/paste them, or link to them, on the Site Stuff discussion as it seems that MNHQ are reading that? (I'd do it but it seems rather rude!)