AI2Bot user agent
Operated by Ai2
AI2Bot is the crawler of Ai2 (Allen Institute for AI), which collects web content to train open language models.
The AI2Bot bot at a glance
- AI2Bot is operated by Ai2 and collects public web pages that may be used to train AI models.
- The robots.txt token for AI2Bot is AI2Bot.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- AI2Bot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is AI2Bot?
AI2Bot gathers public pages for Ai2’s open research models and datasets.
Ai2 publishes its user agent so sites can filter or reject it.
Should you block AI2Bot?
Blocking AI2Bot is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow AI2Bot
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token AI2Bot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block AI2Bot
User-agent: AI2Bot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow AI2Bot
User-agent: AI2Bot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep AI2Bot out of private areas only
User-agent: AI2Bot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to AI2Bot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(AI2Bot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to AI2Bot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (AI2Bot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "AI2Bot")How to verify real AI2Bot traffic
Ai2 publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for AI2Bot, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find AI2Bot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts AI2Bot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "AI2Bot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
AI2Bot user agent string
The full user agent Ai2 publishes for AI2Bot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible) AI2Bot (+https://www.allenai.org/crawler)AI2Bot FAQ
AI2Bot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "AI2Bot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible) AI2Bot (+https://www.allenai.org/crawler)
Yes. Ai2 states that AI2Bot follows robots.txt rules written for the "AI2Bot" token.
Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: AI2Bot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Ai2 publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for AI2Bot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "AI2Bot", for example with: grep -i "AI2Bot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Ai2 crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
