Verb launches marketplace letting consumers sell data to AI companies

### Verb Launches Data Marketplace to Let Consumers Earn From Their Personal Information

As artificial intelligence companies spend billions of dollars collecting and acquiring data to train increasingly sophisticated models, startup Verb is taking a different approach by giving individuals an opportunity to directly monetize their own digital information. The company is launching a marketplace that allows consumers to sell selected personal data directly to businesses and AI laboratories of their choice. Verb’s founders say the initiative is designed to shift some control over the data economy away from technology companies and data brokers and toward the people who generate the information. The platform allows users to decide what types of information they are willing to share, potentially including shopping behavior, application usage and social media activity. Consumers can also determine which companies or organizations are permitted to access particular categories of their data. Users can selectively enable information they are comfortable sharing while keeping other categories turned off, giving them greater control over their digital footprint. Verb co-founder and CEO Cyrus Beschloss described the platform as a way for people to monetize something that consumers have historically provided to technology companies without direct compensation. The company believes this could eventually create a new market in which personal information is treated as an asset that individuals can choose to license. Verb’s marketplace comes as demand for high-quality training data continues to increase across the artificial intelligence industry. AI laboratories require enormous quantities of information to develop and improve models, creating a rapidly expanding market for datasets and human-generated content. Beschloss believes AI companies could become among the largest potential buyers because of their need for vast amounts of data for future model development. To participate, users install a Verb tracking tool on their smartphones and select the categories of information they want to make available. Users can set their own asking price, while Verb provides an estimated value based on factors such as the amount and type of data being offered. The company’s model could create a new relationship between consumers and the businesses seeking access to their information, allowing individuals to become participants in the data marketplace rather than simply sources of data. The idea arrives at a time when technology companies are facing growing scrutiny over how personal information is collected, purchased and used for artificial intelligence development. While the financial opportunity may appeal to consumers, privacy experts and digital rights advocates have raised concerns about whether people fully understand the long-term implications of licensing their information. Once personal data is provided to another organization, questions can arise about how it may be analyzed, combined with other information or used to develop commercial AI systems. Verb argues that transparency and user control will be central to its approach and says consumers should understand what information they are sharing and who is receiving it. The company believes giving people more visibility into their digital footprints could help them make better-informed decisions about their data. The concept is part of a broader movement toward allowing individuals to participate more directly in the emerging economy surrounding AI training data. Other companies are exploring related models, including platforms that connect AI developers with people who generate specialized training material or evaluate AI outputs. Some startups are also experimenting with collective data ownership, allowing groups of users to pool information and have a say in which companies can access it. Verb’s marketplace takes a more individualized approach by allowing each consumer to determine what information to share and potentially how much compensation to receive. Whether the model can attract enough buyers and sellers remains uncertain, but the launch reflects a growing debate over who should benefit financially from the enormous amounts of data powering the AI industry. If successful, Verb could help establish a system in which consumers have greater bargaining power over their personal information while creating a new source of data for companies developing artificial intelligence.