As internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare begins blocking AI crawlers by default, artist and technologist Mat Dryhurst recalls a similar intervention. In October 2023, Dryhurst and Holly Herndon’s data governance startup Spawning launched Kudurru, a data defence network capable of stopping AI scrapers and, if necessary, poisoning data to break models. “We shut down global AI image training for 2 half-hour periods,” Dryhurst writes about its effectiveness.