Particle.news

Download on the App Store

Major Websites Block Apple AI Scraping Tool

Prominent news and social media platforms opt out, citing intellectual property concerns and strategic negotiations.

Bot crawlers scraping website content for training AI is more controversial than other uses, like improving search functionality.
Image

Overview

  • Apple's new AI scraping tool, Applebot-Extended, faces resistance from major websites like Facebook, Instagram, and The New York Times.
  • Approximately 6% to 7% of high-traffic websites have blocked Applebot-Extended, with news and media outlets leading the charge.
  • Apple allows website owners to opt out of AI training data collection while still permitting search indexing.
  • Some publishers are holding out for partnership deals before allowing their content to be used for AI training.
  • The controversy highlights ongoing tensions over copyright and the use of web content in AI development.