Robots.txt has failed as a system, if it hadn't we wouldn't have captchas or Cloudflare.
In the age of AI we need to better understand where copyright applies to it, and potentially need reform of copyright to align legislation with what the public wants. We need test cases.
The thing I somewhat struggle with is that after 20-30 years of calls for shorter copyright terms, lesser restrictions on content you access publicly, and what you can do with it, we are now in the situation where the arguments are quickly leaning the other way. "We" now want stricter copyright law when it comes to AI, but at the same time shorter copyright duration...
In many ways an ai.txt would be worse than doing nothing as it's a meaningless veneer that would be ignored, but pointed to as the answer.
This gross generalization of other people's views on important issues is really offensive.
My view is that the Copyright Act of 1976 had it about right when they established the duration of copyright. My view is that members of Congress were handsomely rewarded by a specific corporation to carve out special exceptions to this law because they wanted larger profits. "We" didn't call the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 the "Mickey Mouse Act" for nothing. It's also no coincidence that Disney is now the largest media company in the world.
Reducing copyright term extension has everything to do with restoring competition and creativity to our economy, and reversing corruption that borders on white collar crime. It has nothing to do with AI. Don't recruit me into some bullshit argument that rewrites history and entrenches Disney's ill-gotten monopoly.
Companies that can leverage this new wave of AI will have, in reality, 1000x the advantage that you believe Disney has.
There is a massive amount of amazing stories based on ancient myths because it's one of the few large corpora that isn't copywritten. Once you see it in media you can't unsee it. The only space where that kind of creativity can thrive anymore is fan-fiction which lives in weird limbo where it's illegal but the copyright owners don't care. And when you want to bring any of it to the mainstream you have to hide it, all of Ali Hazelwoods books are reworked fanfics because she can't use the actual characters that inspired her -- her most famous book "The Love Hypothesis" is a Reylo fic.
Go check out https://archiveofourown.org/media and see how many works are owned by a few large corporations.