> Anubis is a man-in-the-middle HTTP proxy that requires clients to either solve or have solved a proof-of-work challenge before they can access the site. This is a very simple way to block the most common AI scrapers because they are not able to execute JavaScript to solve the challenge. The scrapers that can execute JavaScript usually don't support the modern JavaScript features that Anubis requires. In case a scraper is dedicated enough to solve the challenge, Anubis lets them through because at that point they are functionally a browser.

As the article notes, the work required is negligible, and as the linked post notes, that's by design. Wasting scraper compute is part of the picture to be sure, but not really its primary utility.