Google, Anthropic and others to support new AI crawling opt-out standard

Google, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI say they will honor a new robots.txt directive that lets a site block all generative-AI training crawlers with one entry, replacing per-provider rules. Engadget says the draft comes from Anthropic's Kevin Kelley and is before the IETF; it would not block search indexing. Microsoft also plans an "AI Grounding" setting for answer-time fetches. OpenAI and Microsoft reportedly ship support within months, Google next year; Meta has not committed. Most timing and scope details remain unverified.