Monday, November 9, 2026 Independent US tech newsroom
LexxWire US Tech & AI News
A laptop showing a website's robots.txt file with code on screen, illustrating the shared AI training opt-out signal

Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic Back One robots.txt Line to Opt Out of AI Training

Four of the biggest names in AI agreed on October 30 to read the same two lines in a website’s robots.txt file as a “no” to AI training. Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic each said they will honor a single shared policy token, __usage_ai-training, so a site owner can state the preference once instead of writing a separate rule for every lab. The Verge first reported the deal, and TechRadar picked up the story this week as publishers started asking what it actually does. ...

November 8, 2026 · 6 min · 1254 words ·