In early March, Cloudflare announced that they have built a new AI assistant to help with its many services that keep the internet running. As one of the biggest suppliers of site hosting, cloud computing and content delivery networking, Cloudflare is instrumental to many online businesses. The new assistant is geared toward providing insights and consulting surrounding security.
Today, we are introducing an AI assistant to help you query your security event data, enabling you to more quickly discover anomalies and potential security attacks. https://t.co/47XkvlT9Qf #SecurityWeek
— Cloudflare (@Cloudflare) March 4, 2024
Securing Digital Economies
When doing business with Cloudflare, every client is provided with a dashboard from which they can access all the tools and metrics they need. Now clients can find an extra tool in that dashboard, found in its security analytics menu. The new AI assistant was built off of Cloudflare’s pre-existing Workers AI platform, enabling users to use serverless GPUs to run open-source machine learning models.
Cloudflare’s new assistant will make website management more feasible for online enterprises across the world. As the sector goes, online businesses continue to expand industries like e-commerce or iGaming. Platforms like Shopify use the service to secure their members’ stores, while Paddy Power online slot games are also protected by its services. Many more entrepreneurs rely on the service, however, as small and medium-sized businesses often tap into Cloudflare’s free plan for its basic security features.
Cloudflare’s AI Connection
Through Cloudflare’s Workers AI, both professional and amateur web developers can now leverage the new AI assistant on their websites. Where clients needed to wrestle with filters to gain accurate information, the AI assistant will instead work like other large language models (LLMs).
It also makes a lot of functions more seamless, particularly when comparing data that the dashboard gives you. For example, checking two metrics in the same window may be impossible, so using two tabs and switching between them was common. However, with the AI assistant, it becomes possible to ask the assistant to run the comparison on one page.
In their announcement, Cloudflare gives “compare attack traffic between US and UK” as an example of how site owners can get critical information during a sitewide security event. The ability to type out queries, as if conversing with the AI, can demystify Cloudflare’s services for newcomers. This method of engagement has become commonplace after OpenAI’s ChatGPT success. OpenAI also partners with Cloudflare to enable API connections between their industry standard LLMs and the Cloudflare Worker system.
AI Assistant Functions
After opting into the beta, most queries relate to direct comparisons between datasets. Using the assistant, users can quickly compare incoming traffic from the major web browsers to see where most visitors are coming from. SEO experts like Backlinko consistently show that Google is the world’s most popular search engine, which is unsurprising. However, seeing a large Safari audience at your website could help site owners optimise their domain for Apple instead.
Another feature compares traffic between HTTP versions so, if a lot of visitors use an older version, owners can take measures to reduce latency on-site to provide users with a more pleasurable experience. Non-comparative commands focus on sniffing out bot traffic by pulling API interactions with low bot scores, so you’re only crunching human-made numbers and not digital noise.
Initially released as a beta version, the AI assistant still has a lot to learn. However, Cloudflare is going to continue developing the AI’s functionality to make it even more attractive to business and enterprise-tier clients.