Bots are overwhelming websites with their hunger for AI data

AI bots are overwhelming cultural institutions' websites with aggressive data harvesting for training purposes. A GLAM-E Labs survey of 43 organizations found that 39 experienced increased traffic, with 27 attributing it to AI bots. These bot swarms are causing service outages and unsustainable costs for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Traditional defenses like robots.txt files are proving ineffective, while bot protection services from AWS and Cloudflare offer some relief. The report calls for AI companies to develop more responsible data collection methods.