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Patreon<\/a>, the membership platform for creators, is cracking down on AI scraping its content for training purposes. On Thursday, the company shared that it\u2019s working with internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare to directly block access to AI bots designed to train their AI models on creators\u2019 work without permission. <\/p>\n The strengthened measures were necessary because AI scraping has become more sophisticated since it first put measures in place to deter AI crawlers in 2023, the company says. In addition, Patreon\u2019s paywall has long locked much of creators\u2019 content out of reach of crawlers. But more recently, the company introduced new discovery tools like a redesigned Home Feed and its tweet-like Quips<\/a>, which could expose more content to crawlers.<\/p>\n The changes come about as more online publishers and content creators are coming to grips with how AI is ingesting their work for the purpose of making their AI models smarter. To combat this, Cloudflare now offers tools that allow website publishers to restrict AI bots<\/a>, including a\u00a0marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping<\/a>, dubbed Pay Per Crawl. Earlier this month, it changed its policies<\/a> so that \u201cmixed-use\u201d crawlers, meaning those that both index and train on a website\u2019s content, are blocked by default on any pages that host ads.<\/p>\n Patreon says that it\u2019s extending its existing work with Cloudflare to use the company\u2019s AI Crawl Control technology to update its AI policies and enforcement tools. The difference here is that instead of simply asking AI crawlers not to scrape content using the robots.txt files \u2014 a standard way to provide bots with instructions on how they can use its site \u2014 Patreon is now actively blocking AI training bots. <\/p>\n \u201cConsent shouldn\u2019t depend on whether a scraper chooses to behave,\u201d a Patreon blog post<\/a> explains, referencing the stricter measures. <\/p>\n When testing the features, individual AI training crawlers\u2019 weekly attempts to access Patreon went from \u201cthousands of attempts to zero,\u201d the post noted. That indicates that the AI scrapers were ignoring Patreon\u2019s robots.txt file and scraping the site anyway, despite its requests. <\/p>\n However, the company said that it will allow bots that index pages and organize information that can be used to send users back to Patreon. <\/p>\n \u201cAs AI agents become increasingly powerful and popular, creators deserve a meaningful say in how their work is used by AI companies,\u201d remarked Patreon\u2019s product chief Drew Rowny in the announcement. \u201cOn most of the Internet, creators have to accept AI training on their work just to reach and grow an audience. Patreon has a different vision: creators should be able to grow their audience and control how their work is used.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n