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Patreon Blocks AI Scrapers Cold
17 Jul
Summary
- Patreon now actively blocks AI training bots with Cloudflare.
- Existing measures against AI crawlers were deemed insufficient.
- New tools aimed to protect creators' works from unauthorized use.
Patreon has significantly tightened its defenses against AI bots that scrape creator content for model training, a move necessitated by increasingly sophisticated AI technologies. The membership platform is now actively blocking unauthorized AI training bots, moving beyond previous reliance on robots.txt files.
This strengthened approach, developed in partnership with Cloudflare, employs AI Crawl Control technology. Patreon's product chief, Drew Rowny, emphasized that creators should have a meaningful say in how their work is used by AI companies, a vision that contrasts with the widespread practice of accepting AI training for audience growth.
The platform observed a dramatic reduction in AI training crawler attempts after implementing the new measures, indicating the ineffectiveness of past requests. However, bots that index pages to direct users back to Patreon will still be permitted.
