Paywall and AI access is a question of how to handle content that is available only to subscribers while remaining visible in search and in generative answers. The solution does not lie in showing robots different content than people see – that is cloaking, which the rules prohibit and penalise. The opposite approach is used: the content is marked as paid using structured data, a clearly defined preview is made accessible, and the rest remains behind login. Systems then know that the content exists and what it concerns, but they do not get the full text. Some publishers additionally choose the route of licensing agreements with model operators. Weigh the decision commercially: stricter protection means lower visibility and a smaller inflow of new readers.
See also: Meta rules for AI bots, AI Crawler, Grounding.
