Cloudflare – the leading connectivity cloud company, has announced it is now the first Internet infrastructure provider to block AI crawlers accessing content without permission or compensation, by default. 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.
For decades, the Internet has operated on a simple exchange: search engines index content and direct users back to original websites, generating traffic and ad revenue for websites of all sizes. This cycle rewards creators that produce quality content with money and a following, while helping users discover new and relevant information. That model is now broken. AI crawlers collect content like 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.
“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.”
Enforcing a Permission-Based Model for the Internet
Cloudflare powers one of the world’s largest networks, helping to manage and protect traffic for 20% of the web. The company handles trillions of requests daily and thus has the world’s most advanced bot management solutions, accurately distinguishing between human users and AI crawlers. In September 2024, Cloudflare introduced the option to block AI crawlers in a single click. More than one million customers have since chosen this option, meant to be an aggressive but easy solution that halts scraping while they determine their AI strategy.
Now, Cloudflare is taking the next step to enforce a permission-based model for AI crawlers. 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.
Top Global Publishers, Media, & Technology Companies Embrace a Permission-Based Model for AI Crawling
Leading content, media, and technology companies are in support of creating a more sustainable future that values original content, including: ADWEEK, The Arena Group, The Associated Press, The Atlantic, Atlas Obscura, BuzzFeed, Inc., Condé Nast, Digital Content Next, DOC, Dotdash Meredith, Drupal & Acquia, EngineEars, Evolve Media, Fortune, Gannett Media, Groundviews.org, Half Baked Newsletter, Hyperscience, IAB Tech Lab, Independent Media, International Center for Journalists, Internet Brands, Linkup, News/Media Alliance, O’Reilly Media, PMC, Pinterest, ProRata AI, Quora, Raptive, Reddit, SimpleFeed, Sky News Group, Snopes.com, SourceForge, Sovrn, Inc., Stack Overflow, StockTwits, SustainableMedia.Center, Third Door Media, TIME, Universal Music Group, Webflow, and Ziff Davis.
AI Companies Can Now More Reliably Verify Their Crawlers
Now Cloudflare is making the content ecosystem more transparent for AI companies and creators. The company recently proposed new ways for AI bots to authenticate themselves as well as for websites to identify those bots – giving creators and website owners new identification mechanisms and control over what crawlers they want to allow. Cloudflare is participating in the development of a new protocol to provide bot owners and AI agent developers with a public, standard way to identify themselves.
