A coalition of British and American publishers, including The Times, the Financial Times, and Condé Nast, has called on UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to introduce legislation aimed at regulating anonymous "stealth bots" that scrape website content to train artificial intelligence models.

In a letter signed by Chris Longcroft, executive vice-president and publisher of The Times and The Sunday Times, the group urged the government to require transparency from operators of automated web crawlers, including clear identification and disclosure of how harvested content will be used. The publishers argue that such measures are necessary to uphold copyright protections and enable content creators to enforce their rights.

The use of automated bots now accounts for more than half of global internet traffic, a figure that has increased alongside the growth of AI technologies. These bots systematically collect human-generated material from websites to develop large language models. While scraping data is not inherently illegal, replicating copyrighted content for commercial purposes—such as AI training—requires explicit permission from the rights holders.

Currently, websites rely on the robots.txt protocol to communicate access restrictions to automated crawlers. However, this system is nonbinding and frequently ignored by stealth bots, many of which disguise their identity to evade detection. Publishers contend that this opacity hinders enforcement and limits their ability to control or monetize the use of their content. They warn that ongoing unregulated scraping threatens the sustainability of reliable information sources and could degrade the quality of AI outputs as models increasingly ingest AI-generated misinformation.

The letter also highlighted national security concerns, noting that bot operators often use residential IP proxies that route traffic through ordinary consumer devices, making their activities appear as legitimate human web use. Such methods, the publishers warn, can be exploited by hostile actors to mask cyberattacks.

The group urged Burnham to support a bill introduced by Damian Hinds, the shadow health secretary, which seeks to address these issues. The bill was scheduled for a second reading this week. Caroline Dinenage, chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, endorsed the initiative, describing the use of content for AI training as being "traded on a black market via stealth bots acting as middlemen."

This development is part of a broader push by creatives to strengthen copyright protections amid rapid AI adoption. Earlier this year, the Labour Party reversed its earlier stance that would have permitted AI companies to utilize copyrighted works without permission, following opposition from prominent figures such as Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney, who criticized the move as legalising the theft of creative property.

A spokeswoman for Downing Street emphasized the government’s intent to balance protecting the UK’s creative industries with harnessing the potential of AI innovation, stating that copyright laws must serve both goals.