Google Is Quietly Buying Code From Play Store Developers to Train AI

Google has emailed select Play Store developers with an offer to join a confidential pilot program that grants them additional revenue by licensing their app source code. The company states it will buy access to developers' codebases to improve its AI coding tools. Emails mention a 'confidential content offer pilot' and state the goal is to enhance Google's developer tools. Developers with millions of app downloads have received such outreach. The program is reportedly aimed at addressing AI data scarcity in Google's training pipelines.