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Introducing pay per crawl: enabling content owners to charge AI crawlers for access

blog.cloudflare.com · 1,420 words · saved by 1 readers

Many publishers, content creators and website owners currently feel like they have a binary choice — either leave the front door wide open for AI to consume everything they create, or create their own walled garden. But what if there was another way? At Cloudflare, we started from a simple principle: we wanted content creators to have control over who accesses their work. If a creator wants to block all AI crawlers from their content, they should be able to do so. If a creator wants to allow some or all AI crawlers full access to their content for free, they should be able to do that, too. Creators should be in the driver’s seat. After hundreds of conversations with news organizations, publishers, and large-scale social media platforms, we heard a consistent desire for a third path: They’d like to allow AI crawlers to access their content, but they’d like to get compensated. Currently, that requires knowing the right individual and striking a one-off deal, which is an insurmountable ch

A changing landscape of consumption Many publishers, content creators and website owners currently feel like they have a binary choice — either leave the front door wide open for AI to consume everything they create, or create their own walled garden. But what if there was another way? At Cloudflare, we started from a simple principle: we wanted content creators to have control over who accesses their work. If a creator wants to block all AI crawlers from their content, they should be able to do so. If a creator wants to allow some or all AI crawlers full access to their content for free, they

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