Cloudflare introduces a tool aimed at countering AI-driven bots

Cloudflare, the publicly traded cloud service provider, has launched a new tool aimed at preventing bots from scraping data on websites hosted on its platform for AI model training. While some AI vendors respect directives in a website’s robots.txt file to block their bots, others do not, prompting Cloudflare’s intervention.

In a blog post, Cloudflare highlighted the issue of AI bots visiting websites, especially those doing so deceptively. To combat this, Cloudflare has refined its automatic bot detection models by analyzing AI bot and crawler behaviors. These models now consider various factors, including attempts by bots to mimic human browsing behavior to evade detection.

Cloudflare’s approach involves identifying and flagging traffic from evasive AI bots based on specific patterns and behaviors observed during crawling. Additionally, Cloudflare has provided a mechanism for website hosts to report suspected AI bots and crawlers. Over time, Cloudflare plans to expand its blacklist of identified AI bots manually.

This initiative underscores Cloudflare’s commitment to protecting website owners’ data from unauthorized scraping, particularly by AI bots that do not adhere to standard web crawling guidelines.