Web's New Weapon Against AI Scrapers Is a Font
Designers Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio have created ShieldFont, a font that displays readable text to humans but serves AI scrapers a modified, nonsensical version in the underlying HTML. The font uses ligatures to replace words in the source code, offering a practical opt-out from unauthorized AI training.
AI companies' practice of scraping the public web for training data has led to lawsuits and technical fixes. Now, designers Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio have introduced ShieldFont, a font designed to offer web publishers a practical opt-out from unauthorized AI training. ShieldFont uses ligatures, typically used to improve readability of letter pairs, to replace entire words with others when drawn on screen, but scrapers downloading plaintext source code get an altered version. The designers note that simple synonym replacements would be easy to reverse, while gibberish could be easily detected, so they aim for a balance that confuses scrapers while keeping the page readable for humans.
Source: Ars Technica —
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