Vimeo’s new CEO Philip Moyer last month reached out to the company’s community regarding AI, its use, and how the company should approach it. Today, Moyer published a new blog post with a straightforward message: it’s saying “no” to AI.
“Vimeo will not allow generative AI models to be trained using videos hosted on our platform without your explicit consent, even if you use our free offerings,” Moyer writes. “In addition, we prohibit unauthorized content scraping (by model companies) and continue to implement security protocols designed to protect user-generated content.”
Moyer says that the company came to this decision after hearing concerns from creators and, as a host for creative content, it decided that it needed to pick up the mantle of protector of creative rights as well as the ethical and transparent use of technology.
With the advent of technologies like OpenAI’s Sora, many creators are reasonably concerned that their videos and copyrights are in danger of being used without their consent. While OpenAI has repeatedly refused to explain the datasets that it used to train Sora other than to say it was “publicly available,” there are strong beliefs that YouTube and, perhaps, Vimeo were bundled into that definition.
YouTube’s CEO has already noted that if it is revealed that Sora was trained on YouTube content, that would be a violation of its rules. Now Vimeo agrees.
“Vimeo has always focused on the creator, and in this next generation of video we are going to do even more to support the human creative process,” Philip Moyer, Vimeo CEO, says in an email to PetaPixel.
“We are unique in that we don’t get between the creator and their audience — we don’t insert ads, we don’ capture and monetize creators’ audience information, we maintain the fidelity of the format, and we let the creator decide if and when they make money from their creations. We believe the use of AI should be the same. We strive to become the most transparent, trusted, and helpful platform for ensuring creators are informed about AI usage and safety measures. We remain unwavering in our commitment to our creator community, and plan to continue to invest in innovative technologies designed to protect creators from content misuse by humans or AI.”
The next logical question is how Vimeo will be able to prevent companies from scraping content on the platform. To that end, Vimeo says it has strong security controls in place to detect and prevent unauthorized activity.
“Scraping is a violation of our terms of service, and we consider it to be unauthorized activity so our security systems and teams will respond accordingly,” the company tells PetaPixel. “Our security team works closely with other industry leaders to identify malicious and unauthorized activity and to shutdown the actors whenever possible.”
Moyer’s full statement on the company’s stance on AI can be read on Vimeo’s blog.