Hello Tony,

This is a great post!

I think you have put up a very valid point here. AI bots are reading all available and freely accessible web information without any prior consent or compensation. And, this needs to be corrected immediately — technically, commercially and legally.

One way Medium can protect the writers here is by implementing this tactic:

When publishing any article, it should give a choice to the writer with two tick-mark options:

1. Allow AI Bots

2. Disallow AI Bots

This way, it would be easy for Medium as well as writers to take their own decisions and protect the content or earn from it, page wise.

Medium may probably partner with AI companies to monetize the content that their bots accessed with prior permission and compensate if they accessed without permission.

A summary could be pulled up daily or monthly by the writers, publishers and companies involved.

I hope this would help the writers here as well as publishing and AI companies.

Thank you.