Why news publishers are blocking AI from accessing internet archives

About 245 news organizations in nine countries are moving to block or limit Internet Archive crawlers.

The push follows concerns that AI companies used archived news content from the Wayback Machine to train large language models.

Publishers say the practice raises copyright and fair-use issues, while the Internet Archive says it supports preservation and public access.

The dispute could reduce access to a key public history resource and affect how past reporting is verified.

It may also set an important precedent for whether archived content can be used to train AI systems.