Marketplace All-in-One Pay-per-crawl model would make AI firms pay for the content they scrape
Jul 10, 2025
Matthew Prince, the Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, engages in a compelling discussion about the future of internet monetization. He delves into how AI companies have traditionally scraped content for free, and his vision for a fairer model where they pay for that access. The conversation tackles the challenges creators face and outlines Cloudflare's efforts to protect content by restricting AI crawlers. Prince advocates for equitable practices that ensure a balance between AI innovation and fair compensation for original content, fostering a more sustainable digital ecosystem.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
AI Bots Drain Publisher Revenue
- AI companies scrape content without sending traffic back, hurting publishers' business models.
- This removes incentives for content creators to produce original content.
AI Web Interface Changes Traffic
- AI-driven web interfaces make it far harder to translate crawled data into traffic for original publishers.
- Users increasingly consume AI-generated derivatives rather than visiting original content.
Create Scarcity to Monetize Content
- Publishers should create scarcity by blocking free access to AI scrapers to build a market.
- Cloudflare enables customers to block AI bots by default unless AI firms pay for access.