The federal Stealth Bot Prohibition Act
was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives today as bipartisan legislation that would require stealth web crawlers powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to
disclose their identity and purpose when accessing websites.
Representative Laurel Lee (FL-15) and Representative Valerie Foushee (NC-4) introduced the bill, calling
it the first step in establishing a secure and healthy marketplace and web.
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“As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, we must ensure
innovation is accompanied by transparency and accountability,” Lee stated.
“Today, website operators are too often left in the dark about who is accessing their systems and whether automated tools are collecting their content under false pretenses.”
Agentic is completely rewriting media buying. Traditional manual bid adjustments and siloed campaign setups are disappearing.
The industry is transitioning into an environment focused
on automated strategy and business performance metrics.
The legislation responds to growing concerns among publishers and online businesses that AI companies are scraping
website content to train or operate their systems. It aims to help businesses protect their networks and proprietary information while providing transparency about how AI systems interact with online
content.
The
Federal Trade Commission will be authorized to enforce the guidelines. The bill targets deceptive, AI-powered web crawlers and requires them to identify themselves and their
purpose when accessing websites. It must still clear committee reviews and pass full votes in the House and the Senate before reaching the President to become law.
"We are drowning in bot
traffic that is hurting our ability to serve our readers, and existing technical tools simply aren’t enough to protect our content from malicious actors that can disguise their identity. We need
transparency and accountability for bad actors, as well as enforcement mechanisms that require the most basic transparency disclosure," Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media
Alliance, wrote in an email to MediaPost.
She wrote that the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act is a "sorely-needed, common-sense solution" to a problem that has plagued news publishers
and other industries across the internet for years -- first with traditional search and bots and then with AI-based agentic bots.
The News/Media Alliance estimated deceptive bots represent
more than 50% of the traffic on some publisher sites. The organization believes that forcing these bots to disclose their identity will allow publishers and verification tools to accurately filter
them out from human audience metrics
The legislation would need to advance through the House and Senate before reaching the President’s desk.