Re:We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
by Retric on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @10:26AM
(#35887866)
In general without a fair use exemption or permission from robots.txt saving a copy of a website’s content to your own servers is copyright infringement.
Purely factual information like Amazon’s prices isn’t protected by copyright, but if you want to save artwork or source files to train AI, that’s a copyright issue even before you get into the possibility of your AI being considered a derivative work.
The web is global so the specifics depend on the countries involved. Germany for example does explicitly give machine readable permissions like robots.txt legal weight.
Purely factual information like Amazon’s prices isn’t protected by copyright, but if you want to save artwork or source files to train AI, that’s a copyright issue even before you get into the possibility of your AI being considered a derivative work.
The web is global so the specifics depend on the countries involved. Germany for example does explicitly give machine readable permissions like robots.txt legal weight.