AI is eating website traffic, websites are blocking AI – and reliable information is getting harder to find

Increasing numbers of websites are blocking AI scrapers to protect their content, as automated tools capture traffic that would otherwise go to the original publishers. This trend creates a cycle where platforms lose revenue from site visits while AI models lose access to the diverse, human-verified information needed for accurate training. The resulting data limitations may decrease the overall reliability of search results and generative AI outputs for users.