Topic: web standards
-
Tim Berners-Lee: AI Won't Destroy the Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee remains optimistic about the web's future, believing its democratic spirit can persist despite challenges from centralized platforms and AI, and he advocates for user control through initiatives like Inrupt and the Solid standard. He expresses concern over the dominance of maj...
Read More » -
AI's Free Web Scraping Era Ends With New Licensing Protocol
Major publishers and tech firms have introduced the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard to give content creators control and compensation when their work is used by AI systems. RSL replaces the simplistic robots.txt approach with enforceable, granular licensing terms, allowing publishers to sp...
Read More » -
EU's Google Probe: SEO, AI, and Content Rights at Stake
The European Commission is investigating Google's use of copyrighted online content to train its AI systems, a case that could redefine fair use and require new licensing models for digital content. Publishers allege Google's AI summaries, like AI Overviews, significantly reduce traffic to origin...
Read More » -
LLMs.txt: The Web's Future or Spam Nightmare?
The llms.txt protocol aims to help AI systems access cleaner website content but faces trust issues due to potential abuse, such as cloaking and manipulative instructions, making major platforms hesitant to adopt it. Despite its goal of guiding large language models, the protocol lacks built-in v...
Read More » -
Get Your C-Suite Ready for the Agentic Web
The digital landscape is evolving as AI reshapes user interactions, requiring brands to cater to both human visitors and AI systems, which necessitates a fundamental rethink of marketing and technology strategies. Traditional SEO tactics are becoming less effective as AI-generated summaries and t...
Read More » -
AI Content Labeling: A Controversial Proposal
A proposal for a new HTML attribute to label AI-generated content sections is sparking debate, aiming to meet upcoming EU regulations but facing criticism as a potential compliance checkbox without clear web ecosystem benefits. The proposal focuses on section-level labeling using the `<aside>` el...
Read More » -
Hostinger Empowers WordPress with Agentic Web Capabilities
Hostinger has launched Web2Agent, a one-click feature that optimizes WordPress sites for AI agents, ensuring compatibility with tools like Claude and Cursor while maintaining existing robot exclusion standards. The Agentic Web represents a shift in internet functionality, focusing on seamless AI ...
Read More » -
Creative Commons Weighs 'Pay-to-Crawl' for AI Training
Creative Commons is exploring a "pay-to-crawl" model to automate payments to websites when AI bots scrape their content, aiming to provide publishers a revenue stream and balance creator needs with AI industry demands. This proposed system could help offset publishers' lost web traffic from AI ch...
Read More » -
Google's Mueller: LLM-Only Markdown Pages Unnecessary
Google's John Mueller states that creating separate Markdown or JSON pages for LLMs is unnecessary, as they can effectively parse standard HTML web pages. Structured data is important only when AI platforms explicitly request specific formats, such as JSON schemas for product listings in tools li...
Read More » -
Tim Berners-Lee: AI Could End the Ad-Supported Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee warns that widespread AI adoption could collapse the ad-supported web model by reducing user clicks on websites and search engines, cutting off essential advertising revenue. He highlights the danger of market centralization, noting that monopolies in search engines, social ne...
Read More »