A new report claims that some AI-powered browsers, including ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet, can reportedly bypass paywalls and access full articles meant only for paying users. These browsers were able to show entire paywalled articles when users asked them to “print the text” of those pages, raising major concerns for publishers and media houses.
According to the Columbia Journalism Review, both Atlas and Comet successfully generated full versions of articles hidden behind paywalls, such as those on MIT Technology Review. This means readers could view paid content without any subscription. The report warns that if such behavior continues, it could hurt news platforms’ revenue, which depends on paid access and ad clicks.
However, in its own testing, Gadgets 360 said Comet did not share paywalled content using the same prompts. This suggests that either the AI browsers have recently updated their systems to block such actions, or the earlier tests used more advanced prompts not mentioned in detail.
The report explains how these AI browsers work. They use “agentic crawlers”, which behave like human users rather than traditional bots. These agents can manipulate site permissions and access restricted pages because they appear to be real people using regular browsers. Even if a website tries to block them using standard tools like the Robots Exclusion Protocol, these agents can change their digital signatures to avoid detection.
The concern doesn’t stop at paywalls. Since these AI browsers can also visit websites and summarise articles, users could read entire stories without ever clicking on the actual web pages. This would mean fewer website visits and less ad revenue for publishers who rely on traffic from search engines like Google.
Experts warn that this issue highlights a bigger challenge — balancing the growth of AI browsing tools with data privacy and fair access to online content. If left unchecked, AI browsers could change how people consume information and threaten the financial model that supports digital journalism.
