Cloudflare’s new policy pushes AI companies to pay for publishers’ content

Cloudflare has just issued the AI industry a new deadline to separate the web crawlers used for traditional search purposes, like Google Search, from those used for AI agents and training. Starting on September 15, 2026, Cloudflare’s default settings will block “mixed-use” crawlers from any pages that host ads, the company announced on Wednesday. That means that the crawlers that blend search, agent use, and training will be blocked from crawling these sites by default, unless the site owner adjusts the settings otherwise. These changes to the defaults will apply to new Cloudflare customers, new sites set up by existing customers, and all existing free customers, the company says. The move could impact how AI model providers are able to access web content for training purposes and to help power their agentic services. Cloudflare points out that most website owners want their content to be discoverable via search and often through AI services as well, but they want protections against having their intellectual property given away for free. Cloudflare specifically calls out the “world’s largest search engine” (clearly a Google reference!) as having access to about “2x more information” than other AI companies because the search giant makes it difficult for customers to remain discoverable without being used for AI. …