Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince believes the current state of rampant AI scraping is unsustainable. To address this issue, Cloudflare has launched a suite of tools that could help shift the power dynamic between AI companies and the websites they crawl for data.
Cloudflare is giving all of its customers, including those using its free services, the ability to monitor and selectively block AI data-scraping bots. This comes in the form of a free AI auditing tool called Bot Management, which allows real-time bot monitoring. Customers will have access to a dashboard showing which AI crawlers are visiting their websites and scraping data, including those attempting to camouflage their behavior.
Main Features of Bot Management
Websites typically try to control how AI bots crawl their data by updating a text file called Robots Exclusion Protocol, or robots.txt. However, many websites have been limited by a major loophole: unscrupulous companies tend to simply ignore or evade robots.txt commands. Cloudflare’s Bot Management aims to change this by providing a more effective way for websites to control how AI bots use their content.