Patreon Blocks Crawlers From Stealing Creators' Work for AI Training

Patreon partnered with Cloudflare to block AI training crawlers from scraping creators' content without permission, compensation, or credit. CEO Jack Conte announced the network-level protection on all Patreon posts, framing it as a rebellion against AI companies that fail to respect creator rights. The move follows Cloudflare's default blocking of training and agent bots for new domains displaying ads.

Patreon announced on Thursday that it’s partnering with Cloudflare to block crawlers from stealing creators’ work to train AI models. “I HAVE A KICKASS PRODUCT UPDATE FOR YOU ALL ” Jack Conte, the founder and CEO of Patreon, wrote in a post on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/Dak02PFPnEL/?ref=404media.co with the superimposed text, “POV: you're CEO of one of these fucking tech companies, so you do what you want.” “Patreon has partnered with an internet infrastructure company called Cloudflare to block Al training crawlers from using the work you publish on your Patreon to train their Al models,” Conte wrote. “This is live and happening at the network level on all posts published on Patreon.” Last year, internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, which provides cybersecurity protection and content delivery services to websites, announced that it would start blocking AI crawlers from accessing content without website owners’ permission or compensation by default. And earlier this month, Cloudflare announced new options for website owners to control AI traffic based on whether bots are search, agent, or training crawlers. In September, according to the company’s blog https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-ai-options/?ref=404media.co , all new domains onboarding to Cloudflare will have training and agent bots blocked by default on pages that display ads, while search crawlers will remain allowed by default. “Creators deserve credit, compensation, and consent. If that's not on the table, the crawlers can stay the fuck off Patreon. The free internet is alive and happening. The rebellion has already started,” Conte wrote in his post. In May, Conte posted a 43-minute video https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/patreon-ceo-jack-conte-ai-amazed-and-furious-1236683907/?ref=404media.co addressing how the AI industry fails to compensate creators. “Creators deserve consent, credit and compensation,” in the video. “Consent meaning, ‘Do I get to opt out of my work being used by these models as training data?’ Credit meaning, ‘If my work is used and you just replicate my whole vibe as an artist… do I get credit for that?’ And then compensation, meaning, ‘Do I get paid when that happens?’ Unfortunately, the answer to all three of these questions right now is a big fat ‘No.’” https://www.patreon.com/jackconte/posts/my-thoughts-on-152669616?ref=404media.co Conte said AI-generated works are permitted on Patreon, as long as they comply with the platform's terms of use. In 2024, 404 Media reported https://www.404media.co/how-makers-of-nonconsensual-ai-porn-make-a-living-on-patreon/ that many creators of nonconsensual sexual images and videos monetized their content on Patreon. , Patreon updated its content guidelines for AI content to state: “AI-generated depictions of people that are illustrated/animated are permitted; AI-generated hyperrealistic depictions of people are permitted only if the people are real and have documented their explicit consent.” https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/34055590411789-Understanding-Patreon-s-AI-policies-for-Adult-18-creators?ref=404media.co Last year Patreon and Cloudflare did not immediately respond to a request for comment.