- Several top media companies now restrict AI bots on their platforms.
- A survey reveals that 88% of top-ranked news outlets in the US have initiated such blocks.
- The restrictions come as AI companies come under heat for copyright infringement and content use.
Several media companies in the United States now block web crawlers used by artificial intelligence (AI) companies as the battle over copyright infringement and uncompensated content use prolongs.
According to a Wired report, 88 percent of top-ranked news outlets in the US have devised means to restrict data collecting activities of AI companies. The data collected by the crawlers is used by the companies to train their chatbots and other AI projects.
The report stated that a survey by Ontario-based AI detection startup Originality AI noted this growing trend amongst media companies. Per that report, nearly all 44 top news sites surveyed block AI web crawlers. That includes outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.
Furthermore, the survey revealed that OpenAI’s GPTBot is the most widely blocked crawler. Originality’s survey further shows that most of the web crawlers’ restrictions came after OpenAI announced its crawler would respect robots.txt flags in August 2023. The robots.txt files are what websites use to inform web crawlers whether they are welcomed or barred.
Meanwhile, the resistance by media companies to AI activities underscores growing tension as to copyright infringement and data collection. Following a boom in AI technology, major players in the sector have come under heat for data used in training their models.
Last December, The New York Times initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI over copyright over the unauthorized use of published works. The legal action by the media giant earmarked the first of such since the rise in artificial intelligence technologies.
The New York Times argued that millions of its articles were being used to train chatbots. Furthermore, it said the trained chatbots are now competing as alternative sources of reliable information. In addition, the media giant asked that OpenAI be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages.”
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