My guess is that it won’t be long before more sophisticate tools are available to the administrators of sites that do not want to be used by AI models to help prevent excessive bandwidth use. I have been using hosting service for many years and am happy that the latest hosting plan that I purchased has unlimited bandwidth. Since I purchased 4 years in advance several months ago all of their plans have been revised.
With this type of situation, it is likely in the hosting service’s best interest to come up with a filtering solution.
We pay a flat rate too. But if the demand goes over a certain limit then the extra bandwidth is another charge tacked on. So... It is not in their greedy interest to filter, they are hoping AI shoves us up over that limit.
And those who pay for how much is used a month surely are not going to get any help from their host. Their host stands to double their profits from this new extra AI load.
Are the AI companies going to compensate us back for that extra bandwidth they are making us pay for? Why should we pay so that someone else can use it for free and the tech company can profit?