Today, Cloudflare is releasing a set of tools to make it easy for site owners, creators, and publishers to take back control over how their content is made available to AI-related bots and crawlers. https://t.co/R239wtO3iB #BirthdayWeek
— Cloudflare (@Cloudflare) September 23, 2024
Cloudflare announced a new suite of tools on Monday aimed at giving website owners more control over how AI bots interact with their content. The company plans to launch a marketplace next year that will allow publishers to sell access to their sites to AI model providers for data scraping. As a precursor to the marketplace, Cloudflare has released free observability tools called AI Audit.
About to be on @BloombergTV talking about content creators controlling AI bots. 🤖 Definitely the most stunning back drop I’ve had for a TV segment in a while (@Cloudflare Lisbon Office). pic.twitter.com/h77LvLZwZi
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) September 23, 2024
These tools provide website owners with a dashboard showing analytics on when, why, and how often AI models are crawling their sites. The dashboard also allows owners to block or allow specific AI bots based on their preferences and business agreements. The AI Audit dashboard demo showed the ability to track scrapers from major players like OpenAI, Meta, and Amazon.
"Including those attempting to camouflage their behavior" -> Cloudflare rolls out Bot Management, a suite of free AI auditing tools, to all of its customers to help monitor and selectively block AI data-scraping bots
"Customers will have access to a dashboard showing which AI… pic.twitter.com/3SGzigcb2Y
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 23, 2024
This initiative seeks to address the issue of how smaller publishers can remain viable when AI-powered tools like ChatGPT become alternative information sources. Currently, AI model providers scrape content from numerous small websites to power their Large Language Models (LLMs).
Cloudflare’s AI Audit for web owners
While larger publishers have secured content licensing deals with companies like OpenAI, most smaller websites are not compensated for their contributions and face increased server load and costs. Some website owners have experienced severe strain on their servers due to heavy AI bot scraping, which can increase cloud costs and impact service delivery. Cloudflare’s new tools allow selective blocking, giving website owners the power to choose which AI models can access their sites.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince believes the upcoming marketplace could create a more level playing field by enabling smaller publishers to negotiate fair terms for the use of their content. He envisions a system where websites could set prices based on scraping frequency, although the details are still being worked out. Prince argues that a sustainable content exchange system is essential for the long-term health of the AI ecosystem, benefiting both publishers and AI developers.
While AI companies may be hesitant to pay for content they currently access for free, he believes this model is necessary. Cloudflare’s initiative comes amid growing tension over the use of content without compensation, signaling a potential shift in how digital content may be monetized in the age of AI. The company aims to empower content creators and website owners of all sizes to have control over their content and be fairly compensated for its use by AI models.
