This article is a WTF explainer, in which we break down media and marketing’s most confusing terms. More from the series →
Publishers have a new tool in their efforts to limit AI’s threat to their businesses. And it’s from the company behind one of the predominant threats.
In August, OpenAI announced that website owners can now block its GPTBot web crawler from accessing their webpages’ content. Since then, 12% of the 1000 most-visited sites online have done so, according to Originality AI. The list of sites shutting themselves off to OpenAI’s web crawlers includes publishers such as Bloomberg, CNN and The New York Times.
As Digiday has covered, publishers have had a hard time protecting against generative AI tools like ChatGPT sidestepping their paywalls and siphoning their content to inform the large language models. OpenAI’s announcement, however, makes that undertaking much easier.
For those unfamiliar with what a web crawler like OpenAI’s GPTBot is, not to mention how websites are able block their access, check out the explainer video skit below.
More in Media
‘A Super Bowl every two days’: Inside Unilever’s 50,000-creator World Cup play
50,000 creators activated globally, massive in-person pop-ups in host cities, and more are all part of Unilever’s World Cup creator push.
Amazon expands media footprint with iHeart sales deal and new TV outcome tool
Amazon is deepening its role in streaming advertising with an expanded iHeartMedia sales deal and outcome-based TV buying technology.
Media Briefing: Inside publishers’ real Cannes agenda – AI money vs agentic hype
For publishers, Cannes this year isn’t just about showing up for clients and sponsors. It’s a mid‑year checkpoint on two hard questions: who is going to pay for the open web in an AI world, and whether agentic media buying is a real fix or just a freshly branded ad‑tech tax.