A programmer has created an endless web maze that traps learning AI bots
A programmer under the pseudonym Aaron B. has released an open-source programme called Nepenthes, which is designed to endlessly lure learning AI bots into a randomly generated series of pages.
Here's What We Know
The programme, named after a genus of carnivorous pitcher plants that catch and eat their prey, can be used by web page owners to protect their content from scraping or as a bait trap to waste the resources of artificial intelligence companies.
Nepenthes generates random links that always point back to itself, causing search engine robots to load new links that also lead back to Nepenthes. The programme's creator, Aaron B., noted that a typical "web spider" doesn't have much logic and simply downloads the URLs it sees. As a result, search engine robots waste resources without performing useful actions unless they discover they are stuck in this loop.
Source: 404media
