Operated by Open Source Community
A tool often used by researchers and developers to scrape images and create large-scale image-text datasets for AI training.
A tool often used by researchers and developers to scrape images and create large-scale image-text datasets for AI training.
img2dataset is an AI data-collection crawler operated by Open Source Community. It harvests web content to build or expand training datasets for large language models (LLMs). Unlike search crawlers, img2dataset does NOT influence your page ranking in any search engine. The user-agent string img2dataset can be safely blocked via robots.txt, meta tags (noai), or the emerging llms.txt standard without any SEO penalty. Robots.txt is voluntary; for hard enforcement, combine it with server-level IP blocking.
User-agent: img2dataset / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty. This is the recommended approach if you want to opt out of Open Source Community's LLM training datasets.<code>User-agent: img2dataset</code> — Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.
img2dataset is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).Understanding img2dataset's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.
img2dataset. This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from img2dataset by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP — legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.img2dataset is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).User-agent: img2dataset / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty. This is the recommended approach if you want to opt out of Open Source Community's LLM training datasets./robots.txt file:
User-agent: img2dataset Disallow: /This instructs img2dataset not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g.,
Disallow: /blog/). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable — any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.img2dataset (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "img2dataset" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For img2dataset specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).User-agent: img2dataset Crawl-delay: 10(10 second delay between requests).
Disallow: / you can restrict img2dataset to specific paths:
User-agent: img2dataset Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /staging/ Allow: /This allows img2dataset everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching —
Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.<meta name="img2dataset" content="noai, noimageai, noindex"> to your pages.
2. Add a llms.txt file at your domain root (emerging standard).
3. Use Cloudflare WAF or Nginx to return 403 for this user-agent.
4. Consider IP blocklists for Open Source Community's known crawler IP ranges.<meta name="img2dataset" content="noindex">
• **X-Robots-Tag HTTP header**: X-Robots-Tag: noai, noimageai
• **llms.txt**: Add a /llms.txt file (similar to robots.txt but for LLMs)
• **Server block**: Return 403 or 429 for this user-agent via WAF or Nginx
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