It’s all come to a head.
The team at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Tumblr.com has struck a deal with OpenAI and Midjourney to supply data from its .com and Tumblr.com users for AI learning.
The reason why the .com is in bold is because we’re talking about the hosted version of WordPress and not the open source foundation that’s under WordPress.org.
The name confusion is intentional and always has been. Matt Mullenweg has tried to and has often succeeded in obfuscating the difference.
Now the selling of data to AI companies is the biggest difference.
404 Media has an article about this and even though they went back and made it clear that it’s WordPress.com not WordPress.org many in my circles, at first glance, were confused.
When I wrote the team at 404 about adding the .com to the mentions of WordPress, they obliged.
I got to talking to them about this whole mess and it came up that .org isn’t immune to Automattic’s antics either. More than 5 million self-hosted sites use Automattic’s JetPack plugin which ties these sites into the Automattic infrastructure. No one is sure, as of writing this, if those sites are included in the AI sale of data.
My suggestion is to no use JetPack at all if you’re on a self-hosted WordPress install. At least until the truth comes out.
This story is all messy right now and still developing. Good for the team at 404 Media for breaking this story.