India, Aug. 11 -- In recent days, a battle has been brewing that may realign the contours of web standards with artificial intelligence (AI), the idea of an open web, and how data is collected by AI companies. Internet infrastructure giants Cloudflare fired the first shots, alleging that Perplexity uses stealth to access and collect data from websites that specifically prefer not to. The AI company counters with something bordering on the philosophical - by asking if, with the rise of AI-powered assistants and user-driven agents, the boundary between what counts as "just a bot" and what serves the immediate needs of real people has become increasingly blurred.

In reality, expect this conversation to continue, as publishers deal with what...