Cloudflare says it has fended off 416 billion AI bot scrape requests in five months — CEO warns of dramatic shift for internet business model

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Cloudflare says it has fended off 416 billion AI bot scrape requests in five months — CEO warns of dramatic shift for internet business model

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(Image credit: Getty Images / Sundry Photography) Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that his company has blocked over 416 billion AI bot requests since making it the default option in July of this year after it announced the Content Independence Day initiative. Prince said in an interview with Wired that this feature allows website owners to block AI crawlers by default, unless the AI company pays them to gain access to their content.

“The business model of the internet has always been to generate content that drive traffic and then sell either things, subscriptions, or ads, Prince told Wired . “What I think people don’t realize, though, is that AI is a platform shift. The business model of the internet is about to change dramatically. I don’t know what it’s going to change to, but it’s what I’m spending almost every waking hour thinking about.”

While Cloudflare blocks almost all AI crawlers, there’s one particular bot it cannot block without affecting its customers’ online presence — Google . The search giant combined its search and AI crawler into one, meaning users who opt out of Google’s AI crawler won't be indexed in Google search results. “You can’t opt out of one without opting out of both, which is a real challenge — it’s crazy,” Prince continued. “It shouldn’t be that you can use your monopoly position of yesterday in order to leverage and have a monopoly position in the market of tomorrow.”

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  1. Cloudflare says it has fended off 416 billion AI bot scrape requests in five months — CEO warns of dramatic shift for internet business model
  2. Cloudflare says it has fended off 416 billion AI bot scrape requests in five months — CEO warns of dramatic shift for internet business model
  3. Cloudflare says it has fended off 416 billion AI bot scrape requests in five months — CEO warns of dramatic shift for internet business model
  4. Cloudflare says it has fended off 416 billion AI bot scrape requests in five months — CEO warns of dramatic shift for internet business model

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