Developer Releases 'Nepenthes,' a Tool to Trap AI Web Crawlers in Endless Loops

The open-source program exploits web crawlers' weaknesses, wasting their resources and protecting content from AI scraping.

Nepenthes is a Lua-based tool designed to trap AI web crawlers in an infinite loop of self-referencing, randomly generated pages.
The program can be deployed defensively to protect website content or offensively to waste AI companies' computing resources.
Its creator, pseudonymously known as Aaron B, describes the project as both a technical solution and an artistic expression of frustration with AI scraping and internet monetization trends.
The tool highlights the limitations of web crawlers, which often fail to detect they are stuck, though some claim these traps are avoidable.
Nepenthes aims to counteract the growing issue of AI models ignoring traditional content-blocking methods like robots.txt files.