AI IS EATING THE INTERNET

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Internet advertising gave us free content and services, and a mostly open Internet. That is now collapsing with the advent of AI. Content has now become training data for AI, unleashing a whole new wave of crawlers on the web that often offer nothing in return. AI companies repurpose the content they ingest and serve it directly to users without sending them to the original source, breaking the ad-based structure of the Internet. Content creators are rapidly fencing off their gardens, putting up paywalls and anti-bot measures so aggressive that users are having trouble accessing sites. Humans are retreating to more intimate corners of the web, naturally gravitating to spaces where real identity and authenticity are ensured.