Major technology firms, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic, have agreed to honor a unified standard that lets websites opt out of model training. The shift aims to resolve publisher complaints, such as the December 2023 copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. However, rollouts will vary significantly, with Google and Microsoft not adopting the changes until 2027. Additionally, platforms warn that opting out could reduce how often a publisher's content surfaces within artificial intelligence applications.
Key points
Web scraping for model training will continue by default unless a publisher takes action…: Web scraping for model training will continue by default unless a publisher takes action to manually apply the new standard.
The new protocol addresses only future artificial intelligence training and does not stop…: The new protocol addresses only future artificial intelligence training and does not stop bots from crawling sites for other purposes.
Major competitors are aligning on common industry signals, with Meta publicly voicing sup…: Major competitors are aligning on common industry signals, with Meta publicly voicing support for the unified opt-out standard.
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Publishers currently have to implement multiple blocking commands for every bot that crawls the web to collect data, but the new proposed solution will allow them to enter a single, standardized instruction that's recognized and honored.
SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic pledged on Friday (Oct 31) to give media outlets and other websites a single way to prevent their content from being scraped to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, amid growing criticisms and legal battles from news publishers.
Publishers currently have to implement multiple blocking commands for every bot that crawls the web to collect data, but the new proposed solution will allow them to enter a single, standardized instruction that's recognized and honored by any AI company that adopts the protocol.
The solution will not fully take effect for months, though.
Microsoft will implement it beginning Feb 1, 2027, and Google sometime in 2027. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said it will roll it out "in the coming months", while Claude-maker Anthropic said it has "already started" rolling it out.
The announcement comes as publishers are facing a surge in…
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