Is AI training on your journalism for free?
AI Readiness Check tests whether training crawlers, citation bots, and AI search tools can access, cite, and profit from your site — and whether your own policies protect you if they do.
Built for publishers, editors, and press associations. No developer required to read the report.
A typical finding, from a real newsroom scan
yourdailypaper.com
Sample report
Overall Posture
At Risk
Critical issues need attention.
Key findings
- ProtectionDoesn’t block any AI training crawlers — content can be used for model training.
- VisibilityVisible to all 8 AI search/citation crawlers, with no policy shaping how they use it.
- PolicyNo AI policy page and no llms.txt file — no documented AI stance.
What your report looks like
Every finding is color-coded by severity, with role-specific next steps — not a generic checklist.
No AI training crawlers blocked
All 15 known training crawlers can access your content freely — your reporting feeds their models with no benefit to you.
Editor decides → Tech deploys
No llms.txt file found
AI tools have no structured map of your key pages, so they're left to guess what matters on your site.
Editor decides → Tech deploys
Strong attribution markup detected
Your articles include proper NewsArticle schema with author, datePublished, and publisher — giving AI tools what they need to cite you accurately.
Editor notes
Built for newsroom leaders
AI Readiness Check is built for the people making decisions about AI access and licensing — not for developers. Every recommendation is role-specific and plain-language.
Publishers & Editorial Leadership
Understand your site's exposure to AI training and citation crawlers without needing a developer to explain it.
Technical & IT Teams
Get exact robots.txt and llms.txt directives, plus CDN-specific guidance, ready to deploy.
Journalism Funders
Evaluate a grantee's AI-readiness posture before writing a check, using the same report they'd get on their own.
Press Associations
Offer AI-readiness checks as a member benefit at scale, with batch analysis across your full membership.
How it works
Three steps, about 90 seconds, no developer required.
Enter your site
We check crawler access, licensing signals, attribution markup, and run a real citation test against an AI search tool.
Get your AI Readiness report
A plain-language breakdown of what's working, what's not, and why it matters for your newsroom.
Know exactly what to fix
Role-based next steps split across Executive, Editorial, and Technical — not a generic checklist.
We check your own fine print
ARC scans your Terms of Service and privacy pages for broad content-licensing clauses and AI-training rights grabs — so you know if your own fine print is quietly giving away rights you didn't intend to.
Honest about what we can't see
If your site uses Cloudflare, DataDome, or similar bot-protection, ARC tells you it couldn't fully evaluate your site — it won't guess a low score. You'll get specific allowlist instructions instead.
Managing AI readiness across many newsrooms?
Press associations, chains, funders, and coalitions use batch analysis to see AI-crawler posture and licensing exposure across dozens or hundreds of properties at once — with chain-level rollups and ongoing monitoring. Individual reports stay free. Batch and monitoring are a paid service, priced to your membership or portfolio.