Nearly Half of Top News Sites Now Block OpenAI's Crawler, Reuters Institute Finds
Major news publishers are increasingly restricting AI web crawlers, with a Reuters Institute study finding that about 48% of the world's top online news sites had blocked OpenAI's GPTBot by end of 2023. The response was sharpest in the United States, where roughly 79% of leading news sites blocked OpenAI's crawler, compared to only 24% blocking Google's AI crawler globally. Publishers are concerned that their reporting may be used to train AI models or generate answers without proper compensation, attribution, or referral traffic. High-profile actions include The Guardian blocking GPTBot in September 2023 and The New York Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 over alleged misuse of its content. While some publishers opt for outright blocking, others like Axel Springer have pursued licensing deals, reflecting an evolving and unsettled commercial landscape for AI access to journalism.
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