Many sites support comments. You can leave a comment under videos, articles, or in forums to add your take on something, add something that you think is missing, or, most likely, to correct the original author.
Using public comments or posts is not a new invention. In fact, it goes all the way back to the beginning days of the Internet.
Now, with the rise of new AI tools and capabilities, come tools that take this to a new level.
A report by 404 Media (paywalled) offers insights into YouTube-Tools, a new paid service that uses AI to create reports about any commenter on YouTube. The service is available for $20 per month according to the report.
Subscribers may then point the tool to the comment of any YouTuber on the site to order a detailed report about that user. The AI tool analyses the comment and other posts on the site to reveal information about the geographic location, political leanings or spoken languages.
The developer of the tool notes that it has access to a database containing information about 1.4 billion YouTube users and over 20 billion comments. While the total number of comments on YouTube is not public knowledge, YouTube has almost double the number of users according to 404 Media.
Regardless, advancements in AI pave the way for a new breed of tools that will be used for tracking and the invasion of privacy.
Internet users should be careful when they leave comments, messages or posts that are publicly accessible, especially when that comment might reveal something about them that they would not want to be linked back to them.
“The AI tool analyses the comment and other posts on the site to reveal information about the geographic location, political leanings or spoken languages.”
Hence, presumably, an analysis capacity available for Google (and administrations?) previously to making it available to subscribers throughout an AI dedicated tool.
Not concerned personally : no Google account here.
Do you know anyone, or communicate with anyone, that does? Do you think web crawlers don’t scrape this site, and others? Do you spend enough to make it worthwhile for anyone to care what you think?
No insult is intended, just food for thought. Do a google search on yourself, the results might surprise you.
“Artificial Intelligence” is a misnomer. It’s really “Advertising Information”