Bipartisan bill would force AI crawlers to identify themselves
What this answers
- Is there a US bill requiring AI bots to identify themselves?
- Yes — Reps. Laurel Lee, Valerie Foushee, and Gus Bilirakis introduced the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act (H.R. 9915) on July 23, 2026, which would require AI crawlers to disclose their identity and purpose rather than mask themselves as human or residential traffic.
Reps. Laurel Lee (R-FL), Valerie Foushee (D-NC), and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) introduced the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, H.R. 9915, on July 23, 2026, which would require AI crawlers — including those disguising themselves as residential traffic — to disclose their identity and purpose. The News/Media Alliance, a publishers’ trade group, praised the bipartisan bill as a national extension of state-level transparency rules already proposed in Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
Why it matters: A federal bot-transparency mandate would give publishers a legal backstop just as Cloudflare's default crawler block and IAB Australia's crawler-verdict matrix take effect this fall.
The record: Cloudflare
Glossary: AI crawlers
Posted to the wire August 1, 2026. Edited by Joe Balewski.