How we sustain the digital economy in the new era of AI

"Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken the web's core economic bargain - that creators share content and platforms send traffic in return. When bots extract value at a massive scale without consent or compensation, creators cannot survive. If high-quality original content disappears, AI systems will ultimately degrade too. The solution is to redesign the web's infrastructure so creators know who is crawling their content, can control or charge for access and participate in a fair market that sustains a diverse, high-quality digital ecosystem."

"The internet - that vast library of human knowledge and creativity - was built on a simple, powerful exchange: share content and the network sends traffic in return. This fundamental bargain sustained the digital economy for decades, fueling journalism, culture, commerce and innovation. Today, that bargain is broken, with the architecture of the web undergoing a fundamental rewiring and a different deal for content and commerce."

The internet's original exchange—creators share content and the network sends traffic—sustained journalism, culture, commerce and innovation for decades. New AI crawlers now absorb content to train models that answer users directly rather than driving traffic back to creators. These bots extract value at massive scale without consent or compensation, endangering creators' ability to survive and risking long-term degradation of AI systems if high-quality content vanishes. Cloudflare data shows a dramatic escalation in bot activity, framing a global "bot wars" problem that requires policy and infrastructure responses. The proposed remedy is redesigning web infrastructure so creators can identify crawlers, control or charge access, and participate in a fair market that sustains a diverse digital ecosystem.

Read at World Economic Forum