Patreon announced it is now actively blocking AI training bots using Cloudflare's technology, moving from passive requests (robots.txt files) to direct technical barriers.
The change comes as AI scrapers have grown more sophisticated and ignored Patreon's earlier deterrents, and as new creator-facing features risk exposing more content to unauthorized training.
The company argues creators should control how their work is used by AI companies rather than accepting it as the price of reaching an audience.
What happened
Patreon announced Thursday it is working with Cloudflare to directly block AI bots designed to train on creators' work without permission, moving beyond its 2023 approach of asking bots not to scrape via robots.txt files. During testing, individual AI training crawlers' weekly attempts to access Patreon dropped from thousands of attempts to zero.
Why it matters
Patreon says the stricter blocking is necessary because AI scrapers have become more sophisticated and were ignoring its earlier requests, and because new discovery tools like a redesigned Home Feed and Quips could expose more creator content to crawlers. The company argues that creators deserve control over how their work is used by AI companies, rather than having to accept AI training just to reach an audience.
What to watch
Patreon will still allow bots that index pages and organize information to send users back to the platform. The move uses Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control technology, part of a broader shift by the infrastructure provider—which now blocks "mixed-use" crawlers (those that both index and train) by default on pages with ads and offers a Pay Per Crawl marketplace for sites to charge AI bots for scraping.
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Patreon's shift from soft deterrence to hard technical blocking reflects a wider industry reckoning with AI model training. When the company first introduced blocking measures in 2023, it relied on robots.txt—a cooperative standard that assumes good faith. But testing revealed that AI training crawlers were simply disregarding those requests and scraping anyway, making the polite approach ineffective. The timing of this upgrade is also driven by changes to Patreon's own product: the newly redesigned Home Feed and the introduction of Quips (short-form content) both threaten to surface more creator work to scrapers, making tighter controls necessary.
This move sits within a broader ecosystem shift. Cloudflare's recent policy change to block "mixed-use" crawlers by default on ad-supported pages, and its introduction of Pay Per Crawl, signal that the infrastructure layer is now actively helping publishers and creators negotiate—or refuse—the terms of AI training access. Patreon's product chief Drew Rowny frames the company's stance around creator agency: most creators online must accept AI training as the cost of reaching an audience, but Patreon's model allows creators to retain control. This positioning suggests that platforms protecting creator interests from uncompensated AI training may become a competitive differentiator.
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