Mumsnet denies using AI for content after prompt appears on message board
Site users described the appearance of the prompt as ‘really creepy’ and ‘so disappointing’. Photograph: halbergman/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenSite users described the appearance of the prompt as ‘really creepy’ and ‘so disappointing’. It faced a 19% drop in its monthly unique user numbers in 2025 to 6.1 million and the number of posts fell by 600,000.
- ▪Site users described the appearance of the prompt as ‘really creepy’ and ‘so disappointing’.
- ▪Photograph: halbergman/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenSite users described the appearance of the prompt as ‘really creepy’ and ‘so disappointing’.
- ▪It faced a 19% drop in its monthly unique user numbers in 2025 to 6.1 million and the number of posts fell by 600,000.
Hacker News (AI / LLM) files mainly under ai. We currently carry 7,847 of its stories.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | the Guardian |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/oct/07/mumsnet-denies-using-ai-for-content-message-board-prompt |
| Publication time | Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:24:43 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-10-08T09:50:48.302Z |
| Last seen | 2026-10-08T09:50:48.302Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | k5h0a2FVsBE7 · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Site users described the appearance of the prompt as ‘really creepy’ and ‘so disappointing’. Photograph: halbergman/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenSite users described the appearance of the prompt as ‘really creepy’ and ‘so disappointing’. Photograph: halbergman/Getty ImagesMumsnetMumsnet denies using AI for content after prompt appears on message boardUsers reject site’s explanations after detailed instructions for writing response to post on popular forum were publishedRobert Booth UK technology editorWed 7 Oct 2026 10.31 EDTLast modified on Thu 8 Oct 2026 00.12 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleMumsnet has denied using AI to produce content after detailed instructions to help an AI model write one of its popular “am I being unreasonable” (AIBU) posts appeared on a Mumsnet…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at the Guardian.
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