Artists hail A.I. bot blocker that could finally stop Silicon Valley giants 'stealing' their work

The UK’s world-leading creative industries have been given a fresh boost in their fight to stop Big Tech companies ‘stealing’ their work.

US-based computer services and cyber security firm Cloudflare has introduced a tool which blocks Silicon Valley giants from mining creative works for free.

Titans of entertainment, including Sir Elton John, Lord Lloyd-Webber and Dua Lipa, have been locked in a battle with ministers as artists demand better protection from the bots.

The Government last month defeated an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill by Baroness Kidron, director of Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, after weeks of ping-pong between the Commons and the crossbench peer’s growing number of supporters in the Lords.

But Cloudflare’s latest innovation will give publishers and website owners greater control over their intellectual property, allowing them to choose whether they want AI companies to access their content.

Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare’s chief strategy officer, said the goal of such tools was to give publishers control and ensure a sustainable ecosystem for online content creators as well as AI companies.

‘The change in traffic patterns has been rapid, and something needed to change,’ she said. ‘This is just the beginning of a new model for the internet.’

Cloudflare will enable website domains signing up to its tool to state whether permission is granted for bots to mine what is on the screen – effectively allowing creators to block AI crawlers from scraping from that site. Simply, they will now be able to choose if they want AI companies to access their content at all.

Baroness Kidron hailed Cloudflare’s innovation as ‘great news’.

She told the Daily Mail: ‘This is a radical departure from the current stand-off between the tech sector and copyright holders.

‘Cloudflare sit at the heart of the digital world, and it is exciting to see them take decisive action.

‘It is an enormous contribution to ensuring a vibrant public sphere, now and into the future.’

The Daily Mail joined the calls for Labour to drop its preference to give the AI giants a copyright exemption. Rich Caccappolo, vice-chairman of DMG Media which publishes the Mail, said the innovation would ‘help prevent the current epidemic of unauthorised scraping of websites by AI companies and their proxies, who are using copyrighted content for commercial purposes without paying for it’.

He added: ‘We support any innovation that creates a structured and transparent relationship between content creators and AI platforms, and respects fundamental property rights.

‘It will require a concerted effort by regulators, politicians, legislators, technology providers and content creators to build a new economic model for the AI era. We commend every step taken in pursuit of that goal.’