Google And Shopify Back Cloudflare’s AI Bot Gatekeeping Initiative via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Cloudflare announced an initiative to create a privacy-preserving protocol called PACT that aims to standardize the management of agentic AI, with the end goal of reducing friction for users and websites. The new protocol will make it easier for AI bots to interact with websites by proving there’s a human in the loop, thereby enabling AI agent functionality while locking out the bad bots websites don’t want.

Cloudflare underlies a major part of the Internet’s infrastructure, particularly for AI agents, where its infrastructure hosts and blocks AI bots.

For example, Cloudflare has launched Cloudflare Agents, a framework that enables developers to deploy AI agents. Its infrastructure interacts with local LLMs through Cloudflare Tunnels, OpenClaw features native integration with Cloudflare AI Gateway, and Chinese LLMs can also be routed through Cloudflare’s gateway. Many of its services, like Temporary Cloudflare Accounts, are free.

It makes strategic sense that Cloudflare is taking a leading role in advancing PACT because the protocols and systems will manage the agentic AI bots that its systems increasingly host.

Browsers And Shopify Are On Board

Browser makers Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox have signed on to help develop the new open protocol. Shopify was also mentioned in the announcement as a participant.

Ilya Grigorik, formerly an engineer and developer advocate at Google, led the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) launch and is now a Distinguished Engineer and Technical Advisor at Shopify. He explained that PACT is a way to help merchants increase sales while protecting ecommerce stores from abusive bots. He said that users will be able to take advantage of agentic AI features without sacrificing privacy control.

Grigorik explained:

“In commerce, every extra challenge, delay, or false positive can turn a purchase into an abandoned cart. Merchants need effective protections against automated abuse, but buyers shouldn’t have to pay for them with unnecessary friction or invasive tracking. Shopify is proud to help develop PACT as an open, privacy-preserving standard that can help the millions of businesses on our platform distinguish legitimate shoppers and authorized agents from abusive traffic while preserving buyer privacy.”

Private Access Control Tokens (PACT)

Cloudflare’s announcement was opaque about how the new system works, using jargon “like sites with strong knowledge of ‘personhood'” to describe how the system works.

Cloudflare explained:

“Private Access Control Tokens (PACT) are designed to allow sites with strong knowledge of “personhood” to issue anonymous tokens. A user’s browser can then provide these tokens to other sites to prove that a human is in the loop, reducing the need for annoying and clunky captchas or invasive tracking. PACT is designed so that sites cannot leverage it to track or identify users or their browsing history.”

PACT is backed by all the  major browser makers and Shopify is already on board with it. It’s not currently rolling out, and no timeframe has been announced for the new protocol, but Cloudflare sees PACT as another way to tie the world’s agentic AI to its infrastructure:

“Using PACT on Cloudflare’s network raises the bar for trustworthiness and integrity online without the traditional costs.”

That almost sounds like a one-ring to rule them all scenario for gatekeeping AI agents.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/selinofoto

SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com

I have 25 years hands-on experience in SEO, evolving along with the search engines by keeping up with the latest ...