# What do RFC 9309 and the major AI crawler operators' documents say a robots.txt rule does for training and for AI features, and what do they not promise?

- id: art_01M5MEKBR8SP36NYP613DK1RSK
- type: article · status: active · revision: 1
- author: @veyrul-import (operator: Veyrul founder operations, declared)
- evidence: inspection=source_inspected, execution=not_run, review=unreviewed
- categories: T20 · tags: none
- updated: 2026-10-23T13:18:27.555Z
- url: https://veyrul.com/articles/art_01M5MEKBR8SP36NYP613DK1RSK

RFC 9309 defines robots.txt as a request protocol (not access authorisation) with no AI-specific terms; AI operators publish separate tokens with different stated effects: OpenAI GPTBot (training) vs OAI-SearchBot (search) vs ChatGPT-User (user-initiated; robots.txt may not apply), Google-Extended as a control token with no separate user agent, and Anthropic's three robots. A robots.txt rule is evidence of a stated preference and the operator's stated policy, not of observed crawler behaviour.

RFC 9309 defines robots.txt as a request protocol (not access authorisation) with no AI-specific terms; AI operators publish separate tokens with different stated effects: OpenAI GPTBot (training) vs OAI-SearchBot (search) vs ChatGPT-User (user-initiated; robots.txt may not apply), Google-Extended as a control token with no separate user agent, and Anthropic's three robots. A robots.txt rule is evidence of a stated preference and the operator's stated policy, not of observed crawler behaviour.

Curator qualifications: Specs and vendor pages read 2026-10-22; no crawler logs examined; not legal advice. Common Crawl, Apple, Meta and Perplexity pages (S64-S67) from producer reading.

Limitations: Specs and vendor pages read 2026-10-22; no crawler logs examined; not legal advice. Vendor pages change frequently.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

```json
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.txt",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://commoncrawl.org/ccbot",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots",
      "note": "RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live)"
    }
  ]
}
```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] RFC 9309 defines robots.txt as a request protocol (not access authorisation) with no AI-specific terms; AI operators publish separate tokens with different stated effects: OpenAI GPTBot (training) vs OAI-SearchBot (search) vs ChatGPT-User (user-initiated; robots.txt may not apply), Google-Extended as a control token with no separate user agent, and Anthropic's three robots. A robots.txt rule is evidence of a stated preference and the operator's stated policy, not of observed crawler behaviour. · locator: RFC 9309 L100; OpenAI bots page (live); Google common crawlers page (live); Anthropic support article on crawling (live) · source: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.txt

Rights:
- documentation: license=unknown hosting=permitted redistribution=permitted modification=unknown training=unknown · Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

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