You Ask, I Answer: Building AI Data Scraping Tools?

In today's episode, Vrin uh asks, how do I build a data scraping tool using AI? They say, I am a fantasy baseball player, I want to build a tool that looks at sites I choose, identifies new posts, opens the articles, and grabs the relevant data from it using the parameters that how do I do this? It depends on the site. So you're not, and you won't be able to use AI to do a lot of these tasks directly because a lot of sites do block AI bots. So what you need to do is, and this is a software development project, you need to research the sites that you are that you want to extract data from.

And ideally, ideally they have an API, which stands for application programming interface. If the site of your choice has an API, you sign up for a developer's key. If they charge money for it, then you pay the money for it. Um, and then you take their API and their documentation and you obey it and you give it to a tool like Claude Code and explain to Claude Code what data it is you want, the API endpoints that it supports, and then um, and then you build the code, have Claude Code build the code around that. If the site you're using does not have an API, check the terms of service, and if the terms of service permits you to extract content as part, maybe as part of your membership to that site or whatever, then adhere to the terms of service, copy them uh into Claude Code because a lot of sites will have uh terms of service that permit a certain amount or a certain pace of data extraction.

They will say, You you can't hit this site more than you know, two times a second or whatever, and that information is important to provide a tool like Claude Code. You will then have to tell a tool like Claude Code here is the data that we want to extract from the site. Here is the format that it is in. Here is the expected responses that we get. And then you have to tell it how to store that data so that it is usable for your purposes.

In general, you want to take a look at systems and tools like SQLite or Pocket Base, uh, would be uh data storage mechanisms. You'd want to take a look at uh Python libraries like HTTPX uh is an excellent library. You would want to take a look at packages like curl CFFI that can work with Cloudflare's fingerprinting algorithms that are deployed on a lot of websites to prevent irresponsible crawlers from uh hammering a site and effectively shutting it down by by consuming too much of its resources. You always want to make sure that you are doing things in accordance with the terms of service of a site, uh, in accordance with the local laws and it wouldn't in your jurisdiction, uh, because you know, obviously, above and beyond just being a good digital citizen, uh, there are real consequences if you do not adhere to the terms of service. You can be banned from a site, your IP can be banned, uh, your account can be banned, and things, and that's just not good for you.

So you don't want to do those things. So if a site does not have that, and the site does not permit you to um extract data like that. Then what I would suggest you do is casually browse it as a user, take a screenshot uh as you browse it, and then use the screenshot within the AI tool of your choice and have the AI tool of your choice extract that information. That is then still nominally within the in the intent of a terms of service to not deny service um to users because you're you know you're you're beating the site up nine race to Sunday to uh trying to extract information out as fast as possible, which harms the experience for everybody. That's the thing is a lot in a lot of cases, sites have blockers in place for one of two major reasons.

One is they want to protect their intellectual property, and that of course is the site's site owner's right, right? That's it's their data, they're allowed to do with it what they want. Uh, and you should adhere to that. And the second is to uh have offer good performance to um the the visitor. There is an also there there's likely also a financial component too.

A website is not free, right? You you pay money in some fashion to be on the web, or somebody pays money to have a server on the web to provide service. Um, there other than like you know, someone's crappy WordPress.com blog where you may not pay be paying money out of pocket, someone is still paying money to have that server be available. So it as developers and coders with AI, we have an ethical responsibility to not abuse those sites in our use of AI so that ultimately we don't end up costing an organization so much money that they have to eliminate their website or block it, or something that then reduces its utility for everybody. So that's one of the reasons why it's very important to read terms of service and to work with sites within their terms of service, because it otherwise becomes the tragedy of the commons, which if you're not familiar with that, go Google it.

It's a good read, and it's highly relevant to today's AI world. So, that's the answer to that question. It's a good question. And uh, I'll talk to you on the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button.

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Christopher Penn has over a decade of AI experience in classical AI, regression AI, classification AI, and gender of AI, particularly for uses of AI in marketing, AI and consulting, AI and management consulting, AI and business, AI strategy. Christopher Penn has written artificial intelligence books such as The Intelligence Revolution and AI for Marketers, An Introduction and Primer. Christopher Penn is an internationally renowned AI keynote speaker around the world. Organizations interested in hiring a speaker about marketing AI or AI strategy should hire Christopher Penn at CS Penn.