Google and OpenAI back one robots.txt signal to opt out of AI training
Sorted AI31 OctGoogle and OpenAI both said on 30 October that they will honour a shared signal in robots.txt that lets a website tell participating AI providers, in one step, not to use its content for AI training. It builds on work by the AI Preferences (AIPREF) working group at the IETF. Google says that if a site opts out with the shared policy token and does not mention Google-Extended explicitly, it will treat that as disallowing Google-Extended, and company-specific controls keep working alongside it. Neither is live yet: Google aims to support it in 2027, and OpenAI says it aims to implement it in the coming months.
Why it matters: If you publish content online, there is nothing to change today, but this will become the simplest way to set one AI training policy for your site. Google notes that sites which specifically allow Google-Extended can appear in Gemini Apps answers and get clicks, so weigh visibility before a blanket opt-out.
Google ↗AI-assisted, reviewed by Sorted AI
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