Source: Search Engine Journal
Publishers are treating AI bot access fees as a new revenue stream, but the economics work backwards. Blocking Claude, ChatGPT, or Perplexity from training on your content means losing algorithmic visibility to millions of users who now query AI assistants instead of Google. AI companies have already trained on your archives, so late paywalls don't prevent model training—they just exclude you from future citations and redirect traffic to competitors who've made themselves available. This creates a two-tier internet where only high-margin publishers can afford to say no.