Robots Exclusion Protocol Extension to communicate AI preferences vocabulary
draft-canel-robots-ai-control-01

Internet Engineering Task Force                            F. Canel, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                               K. Madhavan
Updates: 9309 (if approved)                        Microsoft Corporation
Intended status: Informational                              4 April 2025
Expires: 6 October 2025

   Robots Exclusion Protocol Extension to communicate AI preferences
                               vocabulary
                    draft-canel-robots-ai-control-01

Abstract

   This document extends the RFC9309 by facilitating the communication
   of content usage specifically within the area of Artificial
   Intelligence (AI).

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 October 2025.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     3.1.  Robots Control Rules  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     3.2.  Application Layer Response Header . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.3.  HTML Meta Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3

1.  Introduction

   Although the Robots Exclusion Protocol allows service owners to
   manage the access of automated clients, known as crawlers, to the
   URIs on their services as specified by [RFC8288], it does not offer
   any mechanisms to regulate how the data retrieved by these services
   can be used in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

   Application developers are requested to honor these tags.  The tags
   are not a form of access authorization however.

2.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Specification

3.1.  Robots Control Rules

   This RFC defines solely the communication method for the AI
   preference vocabulary, without detailing the vocabulary itself.  The
   term AIPreferenceVocabularyTerm is a non-null string that serves as a
   placeholder for the AI preference vocabulary terms.

      DisallowAIPreferenceVocabularyTerm - These lines specify whether a
      URI and its associated data are prohibited to be used for the
      scenario outlined by this AI preference vocabulary term.

      AllowAIPreferenceVocabularyTerm - These lines specify whether a
      URI and its associated data are allowed to be used for the
      scenario outlined by this AI preference vocabulary term.

   The values are case insensitive and honor the same matching and
   prioritization logic as existing Allow and Disallow robots.txt rules.

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3.2.  Application Layer Response Header

   The same rules can also be set in the Application Layer Response
   Header X-Robots-Tag:

      noAIPreferenceVocabularyTerm - instructs the parser that the data
      is prohibited to be used for the scenario outlined by this AI
      preference vocabulary term.

      AIPreferenceVocabularyTerm - instructs the parser that the data
      can be used for the scenario outlined by this AI preference
      vocabulary term.

   The values are case insensitive and honor the same matching and
   prioritization logic defined for X-Robots-Tag.

3.3.  HTML Meta Element

   Same rules can also be set via an HTML meta tag (Meta Robots):

      <meta name="robots" content="noAIPreferenceVocabularyTerm">

      <meta name="examplebot" content="AIPreferenceVocabularyTerm">

4.  IANA Considerations

   TODO: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html#name-field-name-
   registry

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