What changed: Building on AIPREF working group efforts at the IETF, Google is proposing a shared 'policy token' in robots.txt that would let website owners set AI training preferences across multiple participating AI providers at once; it would run alongside existing company-specific controls like Google-Extended, with support targeted for 2027.
Who is affected
The source refers to website owners who use robots.txt and want to set AI training preferences; no specific industry or country is named.
What it means for your business
For businesses running websites, this means a single robots.txt setting could manage AI-training permissions across Google and other participating AI providers at once, if the proposal is adopted.
What to watch
No action is needed right now. Once Google and other AI providers finalize the shared policy token's technical details and the 2027 timeline, test any robots.txt changes in a staging environment before updating production.
Timing
The source gives no fixed effective date; Google says it aims to support this control along with other AI providers in 2027, but this is not final.
Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/10/ai-training-control
