ShieldFont: A New Font to Thwart AI Scrapers
To combat the extensive scraping of publicly available web content by AI firms for training purposes, designers Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio have created ShieldFont. This innovative font presents readable text for human viewers while providing scrapers with a nonsensical version in the underlying HTML. Utilizing ligatures, which typically enhance readability by merging letter pairs, ShieldFont creatively replaces entire words, rendering the text useless for AI training. This transformation takes place only when the font engine displays the page, ensuring that scrapers accessing plaintext source code encounter a modified version invisible to users. In a white paper, the designers state that ShieldFont offers web publishers "a practical opt-out from unauthorized AI training." The font was unveiled in August 2026, according to Ars Technica, amid rising tensions regarding AI scraping, including lawsuits and technical defenses.
Key facts
- ShieldFont is a new font designed to thwart AI scrapers.
- It was created by designers Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio.
- The font uses ligatures to replace words in the underlying HTML, but displays readable text to users.
- It aims to provide a practical opt-out from unauthorized AI training.
- The font is described in a white paper by the designers.
- AI scraping has led to lawsuits and technical fixes.
- The font was reported on by Ars Technica in August 2026.
- The substitution only occurs when the font engine draws the page on screen.
Entities
Artists
- Isaque Seneda
- Gabriel Abrucio
Institutions
- Ars Technica