Cloudflare Tells AI Bots 'Split or Sit Out'

Guard your content, Tech Insiders.

With Cloudflare tightening its gates, Big Tech's AI crawlers, data centers, and stock-photo empires are scrambling for new rules.

Today's lineup is a masterclass in drawing boundaries.

Here's what you need to know today:

Cloudflare Draws Line for Mixed-Use AI Crawlers

Looks like Googlebot just got homework: pick a major.

Starting Sept. 15, Cloudflare will block any crawler that still combines search, agent tasks, and AI-model training on ad-supported pages by default for all new domains and existing Free-tier accounts, unless operators split those roles into separate bots.

The company's new taxonomy—Search, Agent, Training—lets site owners allow or ban each purpose individually. By default, Training and Agent bots will be shut out of ad pages for these new and Free-tier users, and multipurpose crawlers such as Googlebot, BingBot, and Applebot will inherit the toughest rule applied, meaning they'll be completely blocked unless site owners proactively opt out.

Visibility is getting an upgrade, too: BotBase catalogs every verified bot, while the new Attribution Business Insights dashboard translates crawl volumes, bandwidth costs, and referral ratios into boardroom metrics Enterprise customers can actually use. Site owners can also now set "content use" limits—Immediate, Reference, or Full—dictating whether bots can fully reproduce or only reference their work.

Finally, 2025's Pay Per Crawl marketplace is morphing into Pay Per Use, starting with Ceramic.ai and You.com, so publishers get paid when their work powers an AI answer and not just when a bot grabs a page.

Why it matters: If over half of web traffic is already nonhuman, letting "one-size-scrapes-all" bots keep hoovering up content threatens both ad revenue and leverage. Cloudflare's move forces big search engines and LLM builders to show their hand, or open their wallets, while giving publishers finer controls and real data to negotiate in the AI economy.

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Pulse Check

Should search giants split their bots or pay up?

Results from Thursday's Pulse Check

Are US export controls on AI models doing more good or harm?

Insider Intel

AI Push Inflates Big Tech's Emissions

Turns out teaching GPUs to think still makes the atmosphere sweat.

Amazon and Google released their 2025 climate scorecards last week, and the grades aren't pretty. Amazon's footprint ballooned 16%, spewing roughly 81 million tCO₂e (the equivalent of adding 19 million gas-powered vehicles to our highways). Google's "ambition-based" emissions jumped 18% while its electricity appetite surged 37%, the largest spike in company history. Water demand also swelled, with Google drawing 10.9 billion gallons—a 34% jump driven by cooling thirsty AI rigs.

Why the surge? An arms race in AI data-center buildouts. Even with Google signing a record 12 GW of clean-power deals and Amazon matching 100% of its electricity with renewables, the hyperscalers admit the grid simply isn't decarbonizing fast enough to offset AI's ravenous power draw. Supply-chain emissions are also roaring back; Google's Scope 3 rose 25%, and Amazon's entire supply-chain footprint climbed 20% year over year.

Rivals aren't immune: Microsoft's most recent report logged a 23% bump from its 2020 baseline, and Meta shot up 64% as their own AI clusters come online. Some are eyeing novel fixes—from SpaceX firing up gas turbines for terrestrial data centers to proposals for solar-powered orbital data centers (yes, really). Until cleaner energy scales as quickly as model parameters, expect those net-zero deadlines to keep slipping.

Maybe the real moonshot is fitting planet-sized cooling fins on a GPU.

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Security Alerts

Hide My Email Bug Unmasks Your Address

Researchers have confirmed a year-old flaw in Apple's Hide My Email that lets anyone from data-hungry websites to targeted attackers unmask the real address behind an iCloud alias.

Despite two attempted patches and Apple's May promise that a fix was "expected in the coming weeks," privacy firm EasyOptOuts says 100% of test aliases remain exploitable. Apple has quietly asked for more time while continuing to market the feature, and an independent check by 404 Media confirmed the findings, leaving millions of iCloud+ subscribers exposed.

Until Apple issues a definitive fix, pause creating new aliases, scrub any that shield sensitive accounts, and consider burner services such as Fastmail or DuckDuckGo Email Protection. Also be ready for Apple's upcoming switch to the private.icloud.com domain—developers must whitelist it, per recent developer reports.

Guess anonymity really is just an alias for "almost."

Chrome 150 Squashes 433 Bugs—Patch ASAP

Google just dropped Chrome 150, plugging what started as 382 security holes before the list quietly ballooned to 433—with critical fixes jumping from 15 to 20—including sandbox-escape flaws that let attackers leap beyond the browser's walls and hijack your entire device.

Roughly 94% of the issues were found internally, but standout CVE-2026-13789 still enables a GPU-level escape via a crafted HTML page.

No exploits are in the wild yet, but the rollout is ongoing. Chromium cousins Edge, Brave, and Arc have already pushed their patches, though Opera is still snoozing.

The release arrives barely a week after the 21-fix Chrome 149 update we covered, highlighting Google's ever-faster, likely AI-fueled patch cadence.

Open Settings > About Chrome, click Update, then relaunch before your lunch break ends. If you use Edge, Brave, or Arc, go force that update, too.

Industry Shakeups

UK Kill Switch Ends Getty–Shutterstock Megamerger

Barring an 11th-hour miracle today, Getty Images is officially abandoning its $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock after UK regulators demanded that Shutterstock divest its entire editorial business before clearing the deal.

The US Department of Justice had already waved the tie-up through, but Britain's Competition and Markets Authority warned that the combined photo giant could throttle choice and drive up licensing costs for media outlets.

Shutterstock shares plunged about 30% as it faces the threat of AI image generators on its own, while Getty nudged up roughly 2%.

Getty's board is now hiring advisers to hunt fresh financing and plans to redeem its 2030 senior secured notes. While both firms originally sought the merger to survive AI-generated images undercutting their core business, Getty recently flipped the script: it struck a massive, display-only deal to license its library for OpenAI's ChatGPT, sending its shares soaring nearly 85% late last month.

The bust shows how one regional watchdog can nix a global deal and leaves publishers with even fewer leverage points in the stock-photo market.

Guess even stock photos can get shutter-blocked.

Meet Our Author

Justin Meyers

Writer/Editor at TechnologyAdvice

Justin Meyers is an investigative writer and editor who draws on over a decade of meticulous hands-on research to deliver the full, trustworthy story behind consumer and enterprise tech, including cybersecurity.

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