Analyse WeTransfer denied claims that it uses files uploaded on its ubiquitous cloud storage to train AI this week and rolled back the changes it made to its Terms of Service following user outrage. The topic? The topic?
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Agentic AI and GenAI, AI service robots, AI assistants for legal clerks, etc., are all sweeping the tech industry like a giant wave, as the industry paddles desperately to stay afloat on a neural network breaker. WeTransfer isn’t the only tech giant to update its legal fine print. Any new product that requires permissions-based access to data – not just AI – will require a change in its terms of service.
The passage that caused a stir in the case of WeTransfer was:
WeTransfer released a statement during the backlash to insist that it had no intention of abusing anyone’s intellectual property. It said it made the change in order to cover an upcoming moderator service. It said that it was only considering the “possibility of using AI to improve content moderation and further enhance our measures to prevent the distribution of illegal or harmful content on the WeTransfer platform.”
This feature hasn’t yet been built or used. “in practice,” But it was “under consideration,” the file transfer tool. “To avoid confusion, we’ve removed this reference.”
However, users were The phrase: “You will not be entitled to compensation for any use of Content by us under these Terms.”
WeTransfer didn’t need to ask for an immediate ToS tweak. The cloud storage company actually told us this morning that: “In retrospect, we would have excluded the mention of machine learning entirely as we don’t use machine learning or any form of AI to process content shared via WeTransfer.”
They added: “We regret that our terms caused unnecessary confusion. We recognize AI is a sensitive and important topic for the creative community that can elicit strong reactions.”
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Here you can find the old and new clauses, as well as a fuller description from the company The ToS tweaks are not limited to the ToS. Senior solicitor Neil Brown of the tech-savvy English law office decoded.legal (19459059) told us that:
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“So if a company provided – say – a hosted storage offering, and did not seek an explicit grant of a licence from the user for any copying inherent in providing that service, the company is likely to claim that, nevertheless, it had an implied license from the user for this purpose.”
Brown added: “The challenge of implied licenses is mis-matching expectations. Is what the company wants with the copyright work what the user expects the company to be doing? If this is not the case, the user may claim that the company has violated their copyright.
“So, in practice, most companies will try to include some sort of language in their terms which grants them all rights necessary to provide the services, or something like that.”
He continued: “Some organizations will try to be more specific, but others will see that as a potential barrier to changing the services, if they would then also need to change their terms of service.”
However, since techies are always watching these things, it is important to be told what’s happening. A change without a full description can cause more trouble for companies.
In 2023, WeTransfer’s file-sharing competitor, Dropbox, had to defend itself against claimsthat it was using uploaded data to train LLMs. A customer named Werner Vogels, who is also the CTO of Amazon, noticed a toggle button users could opt in to “use AI from third-party partners” for “work faster in Dropbox.”
Following the backlash, Dropbox’s CEO Drew Houston responded: “Third-party AI services are only used when customers actively engage with Dropbox AI features which themselves are clearly labeled.” However, as The Register]The Register The RegisterThe Register The RegisterThe Register[19[19
As Willison says, trust matters. “People both overestimate and underestimate what companies are doing, and what’s possible. This isn’t helped by the fact that AI technology means the scope of what’s possible is changing at a rate that’s hard to appreciate even if you’re deeply aware of the space.”
Others criticized the issue beyond just the legal aspect, with open standards expert Terence Eden suggesting that netizens stop sending files to each other. In a postwith the title “We’ve got to stop sending files to each other,” it says:
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