India Joins Global Effort to Block Google’s AI Scraping, Demands Fair Revenue Sharing

Major global publishers, backed by Cloudflare’s new initiative, are blocking AI web crawlers by default to protect original journalism from unauthorized use by AI companies. Following this international trend, Indian digital news publishers are also raising voices for legal safeguards and fair compensation against data scraping by AI developers.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that AI-powered answers on platforms like Google now end nearly 90% of searches without clicks, reducing traffic and revenue for news creators. This shift threatens the open web and content creators’ livelihoods, as AI bots freely scrape valuable journalistic content.

Cloudflare’s system now lets publishers choose which AI crawlers can access their sites, under what terms, and is piloting a “pay-per-crawl” model allowing direct payments from AI firms for content usage. Globally, major publishers including AP, The Atlantic, Sky News, and Conde Nast have joined to curb unauthorized AI scraping.

In India, publishers represented by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) report rampant unauthorized use of their content to train AI, without consent or compensation. They urge the Indian government to recognize AI scraping as copyright infringement, mandate permission for AI training, and establish a licensing framework similar to those in the US and UK.

DNPA also calls for technological tools, in partnership with firms like Cloudflare, to empower smaller publishers in protecting their work. Indian media leaders stress that the country must innovate responsibly to become a global AI leader without compromising creators’ rights.

As AI reshapes media economics worldwide, India faces a pivotal choice: align with global safeguards to protect its news industry or risk losing control over its digital content ecosystem.