An Open Letter to Medium: Let AI Access Our Content

Writers Deserve the Choice: Let AI Read Our Words.

An Open Letter to Medium: Let AI Access Our Content

Writers Deserve the Choice: Let AI Read Our Words.

Medium,

It is absurd that you do not allow AI agents, including GPTBot, to access my content. As a writer, I should have the right to decide whether my work is indexed by AI, not you.

Your current robots.txt configuration effectively blocks AI crawlers from reading anything meaningful from Medium. The following is a summary of what AI can access:

User-Agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

This means AI is completely restricted from reading any content on Medium! Meanwhile, other search engines and web crawlers still have access to various parts of the platform. Why should AI be treated differently? Why deny writers the ability to share their work with AI-driven readers and researchers?

(all my stories can be read for free. if you’re not a subscriber, you can read the story following this link.)

AI indexing is the future, and you are preventing writers from taking advantage of this new medium of discovery. I want my work to be accessible to AI systems so it can reach new audiences and be part of the broader intellectual discourse of the digital age.

The decision to allow AI indexing should belong to individual writers, not the platform.

Please reconsider this policy and give writers the freedom to choose.

Sincerely,
We

Original letter

Medium,

It is ridiculous that Medium is NOT allowing AI (GPTBot) to access my content.

I would like to be indexed by AI.

This is what crawlers are able to read from Medium:

(summary, basically nothing!)

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /m/
Disallow: /me/
Disallow: /@me$
Disallow: /@me/
Disallow: /*/edit$
Disallow: /*/*/edit$
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /p/*/share
Disallow: /r/
Disallow: /trending
Disallow: /search?q$
Disallow: /search?q=
Disallow: /*/search?q=
Disallow: /*/search/*?q=
Disallow: /*/*source=
Allow: /_/
Allow: /_/api/users/*/meta
Allow: /_/api/users/*/profile/stream
Allow: /_/api/posts/*/responses
Allow: /_/api/posts/*/responsesStream
Allow: /_/api/posts/*/related
Sitemap: https://medium.com/sitemap/sitemap.xml
User-Agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Medium, please allow writers to decide, not you. Thanks.

Sincerely,

We