ProRata: an AI chatbot that pays for the knowledge it disseminates

14 October 2024

ProRata is an AI chatbot that pays the content producers whose work is used to format answers to questions put to it. Yes, you read that correctly. The technology is being backed by American investor and entrepreneur Bill Gross, writes Fred Vogelstein, for Crazy Stupid Tech:

But it will do something none of the others do: Pay content providers for being the sources of those answers. He’s got written commitments from nearly two dozen top publishers to access their entire archives plus enough verbal — soon to be written — agreements to more than double that number. Meta’s LLM will parse each question. And ProRata will then use its access to this giant archive of publishers to generate answers. He’s launching it in Beta to 10,000 users some time in the next month.

This is the all-knowing chatbot we’ve been waiting for. One that pays those who contribute to it’s… knowledge. Without scaping and taking from others, without their knowledge or permission, or even offering a cent in return, behaviour some other chatbots are guilty of.