Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that his company has blocked over 416 billion AI bot requests since making it the default option in July of this year after it announced the Content Independence Day initiative. Prince said in an interview with Wired that this feature allows website owners to block AI crawlers by default, unless the AI company pays them to gain access to their content.
“The business model of the internet has always been to generate content that drive traffic and then sell either things, subscriptions, or ads, Prince told Wired. “What I think people don’t realize, though, is that AI is a platform shift. The business model of the internet is about to change dramatically. I don’t know what it’s going to change to, but it’s what I’m spending almost every waking hour thinking about.”
