HUMAN and TollBit are excited to announce our partnership to stop unauthorized AI content scraping agents and transform bot traffic into recurring revenue.
With TollBit’s AI monetization infrastructure on top of HUMAN’s unparalleled detection models, publishers can block malicious scrapers while enabling authorized AI agents to seamlessly pay for content access. Together, HUMAN and TollBit empower publishers with industry-leading bot management against unauthorized AI bots and tools to monetize content access by authorized AI partners.
The AI challenge of AI-driven content scraping
Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have been driving increased demand for scraping — by AI developers for training said models and by bad actors that use AI to create duplicative content and websites. For content-driven enterprises, automated scraping raises concerns of plagiarism and intellectual property infringement.
Furthermore, the availability of duplicative content reduces website traffic to publishers because people can go elsewhere to get the same content — whether that’s another website or within an AI platform. Less traffic means less recurring revenue from digital ads. Protecting against content scraping is critical for publishers looking to preserve their revenue and competitive edge.
As the prevalence of AI grows, scraping bots aren’t going away their share of web traffic will continue to expand. The legality of AI scraping remains largely intact, and fighting AI in one-off lawsuits won’t preserve the recurring revenue that publishers are losing. AI platforms will continue to scrape content in order to meet the demand that consumers are increasingly placing on them.
This presents a conundrum for both publishers and AI developers alike. “I think we do need a new deal, standard, protocol … for how creators are going to get rewarded,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the 2024 DealBook Summit. “We need to find new economic models where creators can have new revenue streams.” The partnership between TollBit and HUMAN introduces one such model.
Your content Avengers
HUMAN and TollBit have teamed up to solve the AI scraping challenge. HUMAN’s industry-leading detection engine identifies and mitigates AI scraping bots according to customer-defined response policies — one of which is TollBit’s bot paywall. By sending AI agents to a paywall, publishers can prevent unauthorized AI agents from accessing content unless they comply with your paid access policies.
HUMAN Scraping Defense serves TollBit’s bot paywall directly to AI agents, seamlessly protecting your content while providing a mechanism for AI companies to discover and access your content appropriately. Here’s how it works:
- Collect. HUMAN collects 2,500-plus indicators, including network, device, behavioral, credentials, transactions, and customer-provided signals.
- Detect. HUMAN analyzes the data signals and detects automated activity using behavioral analysis, profile deviation models, and more than 400 machine learning algorithms.
- Enforce. If an AI bot is detected that is not on the customer’s allow list, HUMAN sends that bot to TollBit’s paywall.
- Report. Dashboards show traffic from known bots and crawlers, including the exact paths they are targeting.
Better together
With HUMAN’s detection engine as the foundation for TollBit’s AI monetization infrastructure, publishers can safeguard their digital content from malicious bots and unlock new revenue streams from the AI agents that HUMAN detects.
HUMAN detects sophisticated bots, delivers advanced enforcement of robots.txt directives for both known and unknown bots, and blocks unwanted AI agents. TollBit enacts an AI bot paywall and provides tools that enable customers to negotiate scalable licensing deals with AI developers based on factors like usage type, developer client, publish date, and more.
Customers experience several key benefits:
- Visibility and control over AI scraping agents
Understand which bots are accessing your content and what they're scraping, so you can manage AI bots and make informed decisions to protect your assets and maximize your content's value. - Advanced robots.txt enforcement and bot mitigation
Detect sophisticated bots, enforce robots.txt directives for both known and unknown bots, and use powerful granular policies to prevent unauthorized content scraping or summarization. - Generate recurring revenue from AI usage
Establish a consistent revenue stream by requiring AI bots and other scraping agents to pay for access to your content on a per-use basis and enabling scalable licensing deals with AI developers.
A shared vision
The HUMAN and TollBit partnership combines our respective expertise to deliver future-proof content protection, maintaining a line of sight into AI agents over time across our combined network. Together, HUMAN and TollBit prevent unauthorized scraping, protect your organization’s revenue, and preserve your brand reputation.
