The CEO of People Inc. accuses Google of unfairly crawling publisher websites to support its AI products without proper compensation or deals, leading to tensions over content rights and the need for publishers to block AI crawlers. While some industry leaders suggest future regulation might change AI company behaviors, concerns about content theft and fair compensation remain prominent.
Cloudflare has changed its policy to block AI web crawlers by default, requiring explicit permission and introducing a 'Pay Per Crawl' system to address concerns from publishers and website owners about unauthorized content scraping by AI companies, potentially impacting AI training and web traffic.
Cloudflare will now block known AI web crawlers by default and introduce a 'Pay Per Crawl' fee for some publishers to ensure content is accessed with permission and compensation, aiming to protect original content while supporting AI innovation.