Cloudflare has introduced a new initiative called AI Labyrinth, which is aimed at counteracting bots that websites are scanned without permission to collect information for artificial intelligence. About it reports the edition of The Register.
Instead of simply block such bots, Cloudflare uses generative artificial intelligence to create special pages with artificial content. This causes the bots to spend its resources on the processing of unnecessary information, which significantly reduces their efficiency.
AI Labyrinth technology automatically detects suspicious activity and redirects bots to fake pages created with the Cloudflare Workers AI. This method avoids safety and productivity problems while increasing the cost of scanning for bot operators.
Cloudflare sees this tactic not only as a way of deception of bots, but also as a tool for their detection. People do not interact with the labyrinth of meaningless content as they do automated systems, which allows to determine their activity more accurately.
The idea of creating AI Labyrinth has emerged after the company noticed that almost 1% of all queries for access to the web content come from search bots that use artificial intelligence. Although site owners can theoretically block bots or prohibit access, modern bots have learned to bypass most standard protection methods.
AI Labyrinth technology is currently available for all Cloudflare clients by offering a new way of protecting from unauthorized data collection.
