Patreon intensifies fight against AI bots: No more asking for permission

The popular platform for creators, Patreon, has announced strict measures against bots that scrape data without permission to train AI systems. The company is moving beyond simply requesting that bots not collect data, shifting toward technically blocking them entirely. This step aims to protect copyrights and prevent creators' work from being exploited by AI models for free. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports.

Patreon is expanding its partnership with internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare in this fight. Using the AI Crawl Control technology provided by Cloudflare, the platform now automatically detects bots scanning its content and restricts their access. According to company representatives, previous measures were insufficient as AI scrapers are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Moving from robots.txt to real blocking

Previously, like many sites, Patreon used a robots.txt file to indicate which pages bots should not scan. However, this method was advisory rather than mandatory. Many AI companies ignored these instructions and continued to use creators' private content as fuel for their models. As noted on the Patreon blog, "Consent should not depend on how the scraper behaves."

When the new system was tested, the number of weekly AI bot attempts dropped from several thousand to zero. This shows that previous advisory restrictions were almost ineffective and that bots were openly violating site rules. Now, Patreon can also protect its updated features like Home Feed and Quips from bots.

Creator rights and new strategy

According to Patreon's Chief Product Officer, Drew Rowny, on most internet platforms, creators are forced to agree to have their work used for AI training to expand their audience. Patreon is choosing a different path: authors should have the right to fully control how the fruits of their labor are used while growing their audience.

At the same time, the platform will not block all bots. Search engine indexing bots—agents that direct users to Patreon pages and organize information—will remain allowed. Only bots that steal data to train neural networks will face restrictions.

These changes come at a time when tensions between content creators and AI giants are rising worldwide. Services like Cloudflare are now offering site owners the ability to sell their data to bots on a paid basis (Pay Per Crawl). Patreon does not intend to engage in such sales for now, focusing instead on protecting the intellectual property of its creators.