LONDON — In a historic pivot from despair to delusion, the Global Coalition of Web Publishers (GCWP) released its 2025 State of Web Publishing report this week, hailing artificial intelligence crawlers as “the most loyal and passionate readers we’ve ever had.”
The 200-page report, financed by OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic “in the spirit of transparency and gratitude,” placed AI at the center of its findings. While it condemned AI companies for using copyrighted content “outside of fair use,” it also applauded them for generating what the Coalition described as “robust, non-human engagement metrics.”
“Of course, there’s nothing fair about fair use,” explained report author Dr. Palacio Castoro, speaking at a press conference held in front of a malfunctioning QR code. “The world is a jungle. Expecting fairness in the digital ecosystem is like expecting Wikipedia editors to touch grass. We just need publishers to grab the next liana. And this is what the Coalition does best: lianas.”
According to the report, while human readership has plummeted to record lows—largely because humans no longer read anything longer than a TikTok caption—AI crawlers are enthusiastically filling the void. “If those readers don’t want to read our content,” the report states, “then they don’t deserve us. We prefer the company of tireless bots that actually finish our 2,000-word think pieces about avocado toast trends.”
The GCWP celebrated what it called a “paradigm shift” in web traffic. “Our members are thrilled to see these AI crawlers visiting their websites daily—often multiple times a day,” said Castoro. “They’re consistent, passionate, and seem to really devour our content. The number of crawlers is growing exponentially, which clearly means they’re happy and inviting their crawling friends. It’s the purest form of word-of-mouth marketing—if you count machine-to-machine data transfer as a mouth.”
Although the Coalition admitted that converting bots into paying subscribers might be “a long-term aspiration,” it stressed that monetization opportunities remain strong. “As we deepen our understanding of crawler preferences—like which XML sitemaps they like to nibble on or what metadata excites them—we can serve them better-targeted ads,” the report noted. “Yes, overall traffic is down, but loyalty is up. And loyalty, as we all know, is the first step toward programmatic ad revenue.”
Industry experts echoed the optimism. “Crawlers are the ultimate readers,” said GCWP Chairperson Marjorie Blum. “They’re loyal, predictable, and committed. You never hear a bot complain that your paywall is too high or that your newsletter subject lines are cringe. We can sell these audiences at a premium.”
The report concludes with a heartfelt note of appreciation to its sponsors. “We thank OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic for generously financing this year’s report,” it reads. “Without their tireless crawling, scraping, and summarizing, we wouldn’t be able to pretend people still care about our websites.”
As the press conference wrapped up, Dr. Castoro reportedly paused to check the site analytics. “Ah, look,” he smiled. “Seventeen new crawler visits in the last minute. The bots are really engaging with this content. It’s a renaissance.”
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