Publishers Lobby Congress to Outlaw Undisclosed AI Scraping Bots

Executives representing around 300 media publishers, including Condé Nast and Hearst Magazines, are lobbying lawmakers in Washington to pass federal legislation curbing covert artificial intelligence web scraping, according to a report from Mashable Tech (https://mashable.com/tech/publishers-back-ai-bot-scraping-bill).

The bipartisan Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, introduced in the House in July, would ban the deployment of unidentified automated scraping agents that extract and index website material without disclosure. Under the proposed measure, bot operators would be required to identify themselves and state their scraping purposes to site owners. Failure to comply would expose operators to civil penalties enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, alongside enforcement authority granted to state attorneys general.

The legislative effort is backed by the News/Media Alliance, a trade nonprofit representing digital and print publishers. News/Media Alliance president Danielle Coffey stated that newsrooms face an overwhelming volume of disguised bot traffic that bypasses standard technical protections. Debi Chirichella, president of Hearst Magazines—which publishes titles including Esquire, Elle, and the Houston Chronicle—called the bill a step toward a clean internet, while Condé Nast chief executive Roger Lynch argued that AI developers use disguised bots to take original journalism without accountability.

The lobbying push occurs alongside a wave of bilateral commercial licensing agreements between newsrooms and AI vendors. Condé Nast signed a multi-year licensing partnership with OpenAI in 2024, joining outlets such as the Associated Press, The Atlantic, and TIME. Other technology companies have negotiated their own editorial agreements: Google concluded its first AI licensing deal with the Associated Press in January 2025, while Amazon has secured deals with Condé Nast, Hearst, and The New York Times.

Direct legal disputes over scraping also continue to move through federal courts. In April 2025, Ziff Davis, the parent company of Mashable, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging unauthorized use of its intellectual property for model training and operations.