Publishers like Time and The Economist are rebuilding websites for AI agent readability
By
Sara Guaglione
Summary
Publishers like Time, The Economist, and other major news outlets are re-engineering their websites to be readable by AI agents, preparing for an "agentic web" where AI bots make decisions on behalf of users. Rather than just blocking AI crawlers, these publishers are creating parallel, agent-readable versions of their sites, implementing stricter crawl controls, and developing new web standards to remain discoverable in AI-powered search. Time is converting its webpages from HTML to formats optimized for AI consumption, signaling a strategic shift from defense to adaptation in the publisher-AI relationship.
Source
Twitter / XPublishers like Time and The Economist are rebuilding websites for AI agent readabilitydigiday.comKey quotes
· 3 pulledAs AI bots flood their sites, publishers are no longer just trying to keep them out – they're starting to re-engineer content for them.
In doing so, publishers are preparing for an agentic web – a future in which AI agents make decisions and perform tasks on behalf of users.
Time, The Economist and another major news publishers are already experimenting with parallel, agent-readable versions of their sites, stricter controls on which bots can crawl them and, in some cases, entirely new web standards.
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