Patreon announced Thursday it is working with Cloudflare to block artificial intelligence bots from scraping creator content for training, a move that the membership platform says gives its more than 300,000 creators control over how their work is used by AI companies.
The new measures use Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control technology to actively block AI training crawlers, rather than simply asking them to stop via a robots.txt file. During testing, individual AI training crawlers’ weekly attempts to access Patreon dropped from thousands to zero, indicating that scrapers had been ignoring the platform’s earlier requests.
“As AI agents become increasingly powerful and popular, creators deserve a meaningful say in how their work is used by AI companies,” Patreon’s product chief, Drew Rowny, said in a statement.
Patreon first put measures in place to deter AI crawlers in 2023, but the company says AI scraping has become more sophisticated since then. The platform’s paywall has long locked much creator content out of reach of crawlers, but Patreon recently introduced new discovery tools—including a redesigned Home Feed and tweet-like Quips—that could expose more content to crawlers.
The company previously used robots.txt files, a standard web protocol that asks crawlers not to scrape. The testing results, however, suggest many AI bots ignored those requests. “Consent shouldn’t depend on whether a scraper chooses to behave,” Patreon wrote in a blog post.
Patreon is extending its existing work with Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure provider that now offers a suite of tools to restrict AI bots. Among them is a marketplace called Pay Per Crawl that lets websites charge AI companies for scraping access. Earlier this month, Cloudflare changed its policies so that mixed-use crawlers—bots that both index pages for search and train AI models—are blocked by default on pages hosting ads.
Patreon will continue to allow bots that index pages and organize information to send users back to the platform, the company said. The goal, according to Rowny, is to let creators grow their audience while controlling how their work is used.
“On most of the Internet, creators have to accept AI training on their work just to reach and grow an audience. Patreon has a different vision: creators should be able to grow their audience and control how their work is used,” Rowny said.
A Growing Backlash Against AI Scraping
Online publishers and content creators are increasingly grappling with AI companies ingesting their work to make AI models smarter. The practice has sparked lawsuits, policy changes, and technical countermeasures across the web.
Patreon’s move comes as the platform itself evolves. Founded in 2011, the company now processes hundreds of millions of dollars in creator payments each year. The average creator on Patreon earns about $330 per month, though top creators can earn much more. The platform takes a cut of membership revenue, typically around $100 per month for a creator with a modest following.
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The new blocking measures are part of a broader trend. Cloudflare’s Pay Per Crawl marketplace, introduced earlier this year, represents one attempt to monetize what was previously a free-for-all. Other platforms, including Reddit and Tumblr, have struck licensing deals with AI companies, while others have sued.
How the Blocking Works
Patreon is using Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control, a technology that identifies and blocks known AI training bots at the network level. Unlike robots.txt files, which rely on voluntary compliance, Cloudflare’s system can actively prevent bots from reaching Patreon’s servers.
During testing, the system reduced AI training crawlers’ weekly access attempts to zero, a dramatic drop from thousands of attempts per week. The results suggest that many AI companies were scraping Patreon content despite the platform’s earlier requests to stop.
Patreon says it will continue to allow bots that index pages for search engines, as long as they do not use the content for AI training. The distinction is important: search engine crawlers help creators get discovered, while AI training crawlers use the content to build competing products.
What This Means for Creators
For Patreon’s creators, the new measures mean their content is no longer freely available for AI training without their consent. The company says it is committed to giving creators control over how their work is used, even as AI technology evolves.
“On most of the Internet, creators have to accept AI training on their work just to reach and grow an audience. Patreon has a different vision: creators should be able to grow their audience and control how their work is used,” Rowny said.
The move is likely to be welcomed by creators who have expressed concern about their work being used without permission. However, it also raises questions about how Patreon will balance creator control with the platform’s new discovery tools, which are designed to help creators reach new audiences.