Cloudflare, Inc., the leading connectivity cloud company, announced it is blocking AI crawlers from accessing content without permission or compensation, by default—becoming the first Internet infrastructure provider to do so.
Starting today, website owners can choose if they want AI crawlers to access their content and decide how AI companies can use it.
AI companies can also now clearly state their purpose—if their crawlers are used for training, inference, or search—to help website owners decide which crawlers to allow. Cloudflare's new default setting is the first step toward a more sustainable future for both content creators and AI innovators, according to the company.
“AI companies, search engines, researchers, and anyone else crawling sites have to be who they say they are. And any platform on the web should have a say in who is taking their content for what,” said Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit. “The whole ecosystem of creators, platforms, web users and crawlers will be better when crawling is more transparent and controlled, and Cloudflare’s efforts are a step in the right direction for everyone.”
AI crawlers collect content such as text, articles, and images to generate answers, without sending visitors to the original source—depriving content creators of revenue, and the satisfaction of knowing someone is viewing their content. If the incentive to create original, quality content disappears, society ends up losing, and the future of the Internet is at risk, explained the company.
“If the Internet is going to survive the age of AI, we need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone—creators, consumers, tomorrow’s AI founders, and the future of the web itself,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “Original content is what makes the Internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and it's essential that creators continue making it. AI crawlers have been scraping content without limits. Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of creators, while still helping AI companies innovate. This is about safeguarding the future of a free and vibrant Internet with a new model that works for everyone.”
AI companies will now be required to obtain explicit permission from a website before scraping. Upon sign-up with Cloudflare, every new domain will now be asked if they want to allow AI crawlers, giving customers the choice upfront to explicitly allow or deny AI crawlers access.
This significant shift means that every new domain starts with the default of control, and eliminates the need for webpage owners to manually configure their settings to opt out.
Customers can easily check their settings and enable crawling at any time if they want their content to be freely accessed.
“Cloudflare’s innovative approach to block AI crawlers is a game-changer for publishers and sets a new standard for how content is respected online. When AI companies can no longer take anything they want for free, it opens the door to sustainable innovation built on permission and partnership,” said Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast. “This is a critical step toward creating a fair value exchange on the Internet that protects creators, supports quality journalism and holds AI companies accountable.”
For more information about this news, visit www.cloudflare.com.