# OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic back a shared robots.txt opt-out for AI scraping

> Original title: The biggest names in AI are backing a new way to opt out of scraping

- Source: The Verge · AI
- Published: 2026-10-30T20:26:10.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/d2rhrvci7aiy32zo22gd3ci2i
- Original: https://www.theverge.com/tech/1023763/openai-google-microsoft-ai-scraping-standard-opt-out

## Summary

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic say they will honor a new shared "policy token" signal that publishers can place in robots.txt to opt out of AI scraping. Publishers could then set AI training preferences once instead of separately for each company. Anthropic has already adopted the signal, Google and Microsoft plan to support it next year, and OpenAI says it will implement it in the coming months. Microsoft will also offer more granular controls over AI training and AI grounding, and says websites will still appear in Bing search results.

## Why it matters

The article explains how a shared robots.txt token would let publishers set AI training preferences once across several companies, with differing adoption timelines.