AI Training Data Bots Overwhelm Digital GLAM Collections
2025-06-17

In late 2024, reports emerged of online cultural heritage collections struggling under the weight of AI training data bots scraping their data. A GLAM-E Lab survey revealed this wasn't isolated; many institutions experienced similar issues, with bots overwhelming systems and causing outages. Traditional methods like robots.txt proved ineffective. Institutions are implementing various countermeasures, but long-term solutions remain elusive. The impact highlights the tension between open access and the unsustainable costs of providing data to AI training.
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