The Future of Content & Fair Compensation in the Age of AI

In this RAISE Summit session, Stephanie Cohen (Chief Strategy Officer, Cloudflare; former Goldman Sachs executive) unpacks how Cloudflare is reshaping the relationship between AI companies and content creators. She introduces Content Independence Day, Cloudflare’s move to make AI crawling permission-based by default, giving publishers—from media giants to individual bloggers—control over whether to block, allow, or charge for AI training.
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Key discussion points include:

• Content Independence Day: Default blocking of AI bots with site-owner controls, including granular settings for training vs. search crawlers.
• Pay-per-Crawl: Early beta of a new 402 response model letting creators set prices and AI firms set budgets, creating a potential market for content access.
• Shifts in traffic: AI training crawls up 65% in six months; sharp differences in crawling vs. referral behavior between companies like Anthropic and Mistral.
• Sustainable ecosystems: Protecting original journalism, research, and creative work in an age where derivatives dominate; parallels with Napster → Spotify.
• AI in finance: Lessons from 25 years at Goldman Sachs—AI’s potential in fintech, data-rich services, and cost-to-serve reduction, with regulation as both brake and safeguard.
• Cloudflare’s platform advantage: A globally distributed, serverless-by-design network enabling low-latency, cost-efficient, and secure AI infrastructure.
• Leadership lens: Empathy, execution, and mission-driven focus as career principles that carry from Goldman Sachs to Cloudflare.

Curious how AI training, content monetization, and sovereign infrastructure will shape the next phase of the internet? Watch the full talk—and don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more sessions from the RAISE Summit on the future of AI and digital trust.