AI News Today: Opt-Out Standard, Funding (Nov 2, 2026)

A shared way to opt out of AI training

The biggest story in AI this week is a new industry standard for websites that don't want their content used for AI training. On Oct 30, The Verge reported that OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic have all agreed to honor a shared "opt-out" signal: if their crawlers encounter a specific token on a site, they will restrict their AI systems from scraping that site for training data.

According to a related report published Oct 31, the technical push came from Anthropic's Kevin Kelley, who submitted a draft proposal (draft-kelley-aipref-training-preference-signal-00) to the ai-control mailing list on Oct 30 at 15:39 UTC. Google, Microsoft and OpenAI responded by publishing commitments to honor the __usage_ai-training token, and Google updated its common crawlers documentation and changelog to reflect the change.

Meta is also in the mix, though less decisively. Meta communications head Andy Stone signaled support for the idea of a common signal, saying it's "an important step" to let site owners convey their preferences to multiple AI providers at once — but he did not commit to actually honoring the token. Separately, Meta's own delayed terms are scheduled to take effect on Nov 20.

Why this matters: for years, publishers and website owners have had no reliable, unified way to tell AI companies not to use their content for training models. Different companies used different crawlers and different rules, making opt-outs a patchwork. A shared token that multiple major AI labs agree to respect would make it far simpler for any site to block AI training use with one setting, rather than negotiating with each company separately.

OpenAI trims its fundraising target

In funding news, Investor's Business Daily reported on Oct 31 that OpenAI is cutting its latest fundraising target, now aiming for $20 billion rather than a higher sum reported earlier, as investors grow more cautious about backing AI companies.

The report ties this move to a broader wave of capital-market activity among AI heavyweights: Anthropic is preparing to go public, while Meta, Google parent Alphabet, and Microsoft have all been tapping bond and equity markets to fund their own AI ambitions. The timing is notable: OpenAI's scaled-back ask comes just as its rivals and partners are raising large sums through IPOs, bonds and share offerings.

Why this matters: OpenAI remains the company behind ChatGPT, one of the most widely used AI products in the world, and its fundraising needs are a signal of how much capital it believes it needs to keep scaling its models and infrastructure. A lowered target alongside growing investor caution suggests the easy-money era for AI mega-rounds may be cooling, even as competitors raise large sums through other channels.

The bigger picture

Taken together, these two stories show an AI industry at an interesting inflection point: on one hand, major labs are cooperating on shared technical standards to address publisher and copyright concerns around training data; on the other, the financial environment for funding AI's next buildout is getting more selective, with companies turning to a wider range of capital sources — IPOs, bonds, and equity offerings — rather than relying solely on venture rounds.