AI bots are one tool that AI providers use to collect data for training their data models. Cloudflare has developed a product for telling you what AI bots are accessing your website data and deciding on whether you want to continue to allow that access. They also provide the information to decide if current usage complies with any current data use contracts you have. As a third step, and the one of most interestint to smaller sites, is the ability to get value for your data when it is used in AI datasets. Beyond protecting your data, Cloudflare is becoming a broker for your data. I think this is a very interesting product that provides data protection and value generation available to smaller sites. Even if it isn't something that you would use now, reading about it is a good introduction to the world of managing AI bots that scrape your sites and use your content. This CIO.com article provides a good description of the overall issue and Cloudflare's product.

An alternative to real data sets for AI model training is the use of synthetic, computer generated data sets. There are a variety of plusses and minuses to using this type of data but Gartner predicts that synthetic data will be used more than real data for AI training purposes by 2030. This Information Week article describes real data versus synthetic data and goes through the advantages and disadvantages of synthetic data.