By Emmanuel Ogbodo<\/p>\n
Apple’s AI training efforts are facing significant backlash as major publishers opt out, raising questions about whether the company’s AI momentum is in jeopardy. Increasingly, news outlets and social media platforms are rejecting Apple’s data-hungry web crawlers.<\/p>\n
For years, these digital bots have quietly collected information across the internet to fuel search engines and AI models. However, with the growing power of AI, publishers are now pushing back, demanding more control over their content and challenging Apple’s AI ambitions.<\/p>\n
Apple’s web crawler, Applebot, was originally designed to support features like Siri and Spotlight. Recently, however, it has taken on a larger role in gathering data to train Apple’s foundational AI models, known as “Apple Intelligence.” This data includes text, images, and other forms of content.<\/p>\n
In response to publisher concerns, Apple introduced Applebot-Extended, a tool that allows website owners to opt out of AI training. Many publishers are taking advantage of this option by updating their robots.txt files to block Applebot and other crawlers from accessing their content.<\/p>\n
The robots.txt file is a simple tool that website owners use to control which bots can access their content. Publishers are increasingly using it to prevent AI bots from scraping their sites for training data, driven by concerns about copyright and potential misuse of their content.<\/p>\n
Although robots.txt is straightforward, it has become more complicated in the AI era. With the rapid proliferation of new AI agents, it can be challenging for publishers to keep their block lists up-to-date, leading many to rely on services that automatically update their robots.txt files.<\/p>\n
Because robots.txt files are publicly accessible, it\u2019s possible to see who is opting out of Apple’s AI training, which is exactly what Wired did.<\/p>\n
Notably, The New York Times, which is also suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, has been vocal in criticising Apple’s opt-out approach. The newspaper argues that publishers shouldn’t have to opt out in the first place and that permission should be required for web crawlers to access media content.<\/p>\n
Other prominent websites that have opted out include Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Craigslist, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Vox Media, the USA Today network, and WIRED\u2019s parent company, Cond\u00e9 Nast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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