I am certainly not the first person to complain about the inclusion of generative AI on Scratch and will not be the last, but I want to share my own perspective and break down specifically what has been said in the TOS and Privacy Policy , as well as what Scratch Team has said about generative AI.

My Perspective

To start off, I want to explain why I specifically am against the inclusion of any generative AI on Scratch. I am an artist (I do visual art, animation, graphic design, technical theatre, and cosplay. That's a lot!), a gaehive manager, a Senior in high school, a leftist, and a Scratcher for 7 years.

Most important on this list: I'm an artist. This means that my art is at risk of — and has probably been used for — AI training. To me, as the person who put the effort and passion into the pieces I make, my art is being stolen when it is used to train AI. I do not care if I consented to it by consenting to a required TOS, I should be able to use a service without my work and effort being stolen and ripped off.

I am also a gaehive manager. While this isn't inherently tied to generative AI, it is tied to my lack of appreciation for this update. Just the gaehive managers alone send easily over 100 Contact Us messages a year to fill in the gaps that moderation misses, and we have shown continued support for basic studio moderation tools like curator-only comments . To be quite honest, seeing a moderation team who has been in part relying on unpaid underage volunteers to moderate a part of their site, those same volunteers of which have pointed out how to improve aspects of moderation, ignoring small solutions to big problems and putting a considerable amount of effort, time, and money into developing a generative AI feels like a slap in the face.

Being a Senior in high school means that I was already a teenager when generative AI really took off in educational spaces. I had and have the internet literacy that the average Scratch user, sitting at around 12 years old, does not have. I have also seen the detriment AI has caused in educational spaces. My dad is also a college professor, so I have seen how AI is affecting higher education as well. Scratch is an educational website. Adding an AI, regardless of how much it will “only assist” will absolutely harm the average Scratcher.

I've been a Scratcher for 7 years. I was here when 3.0 was first implemented! I've used this website for coding, sharing my art, making games, etc. and never once have I thought “I wish I could get a bot to walk me through this” when I was having issues with a problem. I went to the tutorials. I searched Scratch projects. I went to YouTube. And I found what I needed from a real human being.

Breaking Down The Blog Post

Now onto what everyone is actually here for. Oh boy.For this section, I will pull out quotes that stuck out to me and explain my thoughts.

“For nearly two decades, we’ve grounded our work in the steadfast belief that children deserve tools that center their passions and curiosities, and are also trustworthy and safe for young people to use.”
Trustworthy? And Safe? There have been multiple studies that show that AI is incredibly biased, as it is pulling from pools of human biases, and is not trustworthy at all! And if this AI has no filter on what it can be asked, much like the notes function in projects, kids who don't know any better could accidentally give out personal information! This is not a good opening for this post.

“We are carrying forward this legacy into our integration of AI in Scratch — centering young people’s agency, safeguarding their experiences, and upholding the values that have always made Scratch a space where kids can create what they imagine.”
Young people's agency is lost by not being able to opt-out of their work being used to train AI. And, as I have already stated, Scratch Team cannot be upholding the same values of education, access, inclusion, and creativity when they are openly willing to integrate a biased AI into their site.

“Community: Emphasize human connection and collaboration”
This just confuses me. Emphasize human collaboration by… encouraging children to talk to a bot? Encouraging the use of an imperfect, yet more convenient, service over human ingenuity and kindness?

“Safe: Prevent harmful content; Ethical: Protect children’s data”
Do I need to talk about the ChatGPT deaths? Or even the “ChatGPT hacks”? People will find a way around the filters you put on your AI, if the filters are even safe enough in the first place.

“we’re integrating feedback and ideas from young people and educators.”
Then please, listen when we say we do not want AI. Until I see the statistics, I will not believe that a majority of educators and active Scratch users want the AI integrated onto Scratch. And I especially believe that the opinions of educators and students should be acknowledged as more important than any other group on Scratch.

“an AI tool that offers support for ideation, coding, debugging, reflection, and more.”
I know this is a marketing tool, get people excited yay, but this is soooo frustratingly vague. I can't say I have an issue with a bot that can help Scratchers with debugging, and coding goes in hand with that, but ideation and reflection are too vague for me to form an opinion on.

Breaking Down the New Terms of Service

Same thing as above; I will pull out quotes and explain my thoughts on them. Overall, I'm not a fan of how all of the AI discussion is really only in the TOS and Privacy Policy, as children (you know, the people actually using the site) do not typically read through these documents.

“you hereby grant: … us a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license (with the right to grant and authorize sublicenses) … otherwise improve our products and services and create new products and services, including through the training of AI models.” (Section 8.2)
I have no issue with this quote, except for the add-on at the end. As I have already said, I am an artist, and do not appreciate being required to agree to a TOS to use a site that gives the owners of said site full permission to shove my hard work into an AI.

“Output does not include any Other Users’ Content (as defined below)” (Section 8.9)
This contradicts the statement above. If the AI is trained on other users' content, like we're told, then other users' content is, in fact, in the output.

“By submitting Input … using the Service to generate Output, you grant Scratch a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to store, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform (including by means of a digital audio transmission), create derivative works of, distribute, and otherwise use and exploit your AI Content, in whole or in part” (Section 8.9)
Anything any user puts into the bot, which can include personal information otherwise banned from Scratch by the Community Guidelines, is automatically the property of Scratch Team to do with what they wish. Got it.

“You acknowledge and agree that portions of the service rely on machine learning or generative AI which, by nature, produces outputs that are based on probalistic reasoning and therefore may not always be accurate” (Section 16.2)
No part of Scratch currently relies on AI, the integration of AI then implies a large overhaul in the website's function. And the inclusion of this clause worries me. I had to go into the code of my computer to disable Copilot's mimic-spyware; I do not wish for AI on Scratch to be implemented in the same way.

Breaking Down the New Privacy Policy

You know the drill by now.

“We use Personal Information that we collect on the Scratch Website … including by training AI tools”
Same thing as before, just said in a different font. Anything you put on this website will be used to train AI.

“We may use AI and other automated technologies to facilitate the purposes set out above, such as to provide coding recommendations, moderate content”
Scratch Team. Scratch Team, listen to me: I know you are short on moderators, I know paying your team is expensive. I know that. I love that you try your best to pay your moderators a fair wage. But please, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT use AI to properly moderate your site!! I'd be fine if the filterbot was replaced with an analytical AI to improve the filter with possibly less work, but that is all. Another site recently had a poll for a similar reason, and while I'm waiting on the results to be public, the way they wished to enact an AI would entirely screw with their moderation model for months. It is not worth it right now, with Scratch moderation in the state that it is in.

“De-identified or aggregated information may be shared with third parties who develop safety tools, learning tools, and to train AI models to improve the safety of the Scratch Website”
Again, don't use AI, especially third-party AI models, to moderate your site. Though I will admit, I do appreciate the promise that no identifying information is being sent anywhere outside of the Scratch Foundation. Big thumbs-up for that!

Additional Thoughts on Generative AI

Okay, I'm almost done yapping. Firstly, I just want to say that Hank Green has made a ton of videos on AI . I personally haven't watched all of these videos yet, but this guy knows his stuff.

Secondly, AI has a very real impact on the environment . The water needed to cool the machines is causing heat pollution (not to the same degree as other things, but come on, did we really need AI to make it even a little worse??), and these new data centers require a ton of electricity ( 58% of electricity is still created by burning fossil fuels ) if they don't just run on gas anyway.

Thirdly, AI strains power grids. Scratch Team complains a lot about their servers being strained as the site continues to grow. It's kind of like that. Except the people affected are people like you and me. I saw a ton of news articles last week, and a few this week, about electricity providers across the US having to send out rolling blackouts in the middle of winter because of the strain on electrical grids. With bad winter storms sweeping along the East coast this week, rolling blackouts like this can literally get people killed.

Lastly, AI is a bubble . This is a pretty well-touched-upon idea . Since not long after the beginning of the AI boom around 2022, investors and companies have been losing money, only spurred onwards by the promise that this is the big new thing. It's, quite frankly, only a matter of time before the bubble bursts, and I would hate for Scratch to get caught in the fallout.


Since I've talked a lot of negativity, I just want to say that I really do love this site, I've been here for 7 years. That's why I'm ripping into this new policy, because I believe it is a very poor gamble. I want to see this site grow and be around long after I've moved on from the site.
Now I should probably log off because it's after midnight for me. O-o Remember to read the TOS and Privacy Policies of any sites you use, don't sell your personal information to greedy corporations, and stay safe on the internet.

(TL;DR, I'm not a fan of the new TOS and Privacy Policy, and it seems parts of it may have been written hastily and contradicts itself. The TOS states that your content will be used to train generative AI models, any content you put into or receive from the proposed AI is wholly ST's property, there are plans to fully integrate it into the function of the website, and may be used as a stand-in moderator. Generative AI in and of itself is also not very good for the general public, will encourage users to not interact with the Scratch community, and will cost Scratch Foundation a lot of money that could be better used elsewhere. Please read through or watch any links I've embedded, and support the forum posts I've linked.)
Edit: Fixed glaring grammatical errors, added more sources.

By their logic, the best way to enhance creativity is to make kids talk to algorithms performing billions of calculations per second that have no sense of creativity whatsoever and only scrape from existing sources to pick random things with pure mathematical probability.

This is perfectly accurate. Ai is contaminating the world, and putting so many people out of jobs and businesses, I am so disappointed that Scratch would have to resort to Ai

exactly. one cannot claim to support artists while actively stabbing them in the back

for all interested parties involved, i propose a solution. a solution to evading the ToS in a way that makes sure no boxes are checked: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1269883836/

TheIlluminatiExposer wrote:

for all interested parties involved, i propose a solution. a solution to evading the ToS in a way that makes sure no boxes are checked: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1269883836/

I would not recommend trying to evade the TOS and Privacy Policy to continue using Scratch. If you do not like a new implementation, to the point of attempting to actively evade the TOS, then just leave Scratch. It sends a much larger message than trying to glitch the site into thinking you agreed to the changes.

TheWolfyGirl wrote:

The membership was already bad enough,

I personally don't have an issue with the membership itself. Scratch Team needs the money, and if setting aside a small team for a hit to make incentive for people to donate works, I have no issues. My issue comes with the fact that the money from these new memberships are being used to implement AI onto Scratch, rather than improve moderation and setvers like what we were told when memberships were announced.

TheWolfGirl wrote:

And let’s not forget how people have been on their knees BEGGING for dark mode and color modes for accessibility and such

This is another part of the reason I am against the prioritization of AI is that I am a big supporter of dark mode for accessibility reasons. The colour combination when Scratch switched from blue to purple causes eyestrain for me, which was leading to daily migraines until I downloaded a browser extension that let me change the colour.

TheWolfGirl wrote:

Scratch. Does. Not. Care.

At this point, I have to believe this is true. When faced with glaring issues in their moderation, Scratch Team shut down the forum discussions, or gave a quick, lazy response. Last month, I had a more productive conversation with former Scratch Team member Za-Chary than I have ever had with a current Scratch Team member, either through Contact Us or on forums.

TheWolfGirl wrote:

This is going to hurt them, and it’s going to hurt their users even more

This is what I said in my original post, but I do want to bump this.
Please excuse typos or grammatical errors, I'm typing this during a slow period at work and cannot proofread very well right now.