img2dataset

Operator

img2dataset

Type

Crawler

Official page

github.com

robots.txt token

img2dataset

In Vireo

Excluded, reported under Other bots

What it does

Downloads large sets of images into datasets for LLM training or other purposes.

ai.robots.txt describes its function as: Scrapes images for use in LLMs.

Source: ai.robots.txt.

Crawl frequency, per ai.robots.txt: At the discretion of img2dataset users.

User agent

Requests from img2dataset carry a user agent like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0 (compatible; test; +https://github.com/rom1504/img2dataset)

Device Detector identifies it with this pattern (a case-insensitive regular expression):

img2dataset

Anyone can put any name in a user agent. Where the operator publishes IP ranges, checking the request's address against them is the way to confirm a visit is genuine.

How to block or allow img2dataset

Add a group for its token to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To keep it out of the whole site:

User-agent: img2dataset
Disallow: /

To let it crawl everything, use an empty Disallow: or Allow: / instead. WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt that many SEO plugins let you edit. A real robots.txt file uploaded to the site root takes its place.

robots.txt is a request, so it only works on crawlers that honour it. A bot that ignores it has to be blocked at the server or firewall, by user agent or IP address.

How Vireo counts img2dataset

Vireo keeps requests from img2dataset out of your pageviews and visitors and counts them on its bot report under Other bots, so you can see how much it left out rather than wonder why your server logs show more traffic.

Checked by running Vireo Analytics' own bot filter over img2dataset's user agents.

Sources

• img2dataset information page (github.com)
• Matomo Device Detector, bots.yml (LGPL-3.0)
• ai.robots.txt (MIT)