Add a dedicated AI Tools URL category to your SWG platform with custom URL categories. Our API-driven feed delivers 17,410+ domains across 18 categories — updated daily, no manual list management.
SWG platforms classify web traffic into URL categories for policy enforcement and visibility. When it comes to AI tools, most vendors added a single monolithic "Generative AI" or "AI/ML" category in late 2023 — and it falls short in three critical ways.
Leading SWG vendors classify fewer than 800 AI-tool domains. The actual landscape spans 17,410+ domains across 18 distinct functional categories — leaving thousands of niche and emerging tools unblocked.
A single "AI Tools" category cannot distinguish between an AI code assistant engineering needs and an AI writing tool compliance wants blocked. Per-department policies are impossible.
New AI tools launch daily. SWG vendor classification pipelines take weeks to months to evaluate and publish new domains. During that lag, employees access unclassified tools freely.
The workflow is the same across vendors: create a custom category, populate it with domains from our feed, and reference that category in your web policy rules. The differences are in how each platform ingests external lists and refreshes them.
Name it "AI Tools - Blocked" via the admin portal or platform API. Each custom category supports up to 25,000 URLs.
Use the /urlCategories endpoint to push domain entries from our feed. Create multiple categories to segment by AI-tool type.
Generate API keys under Administration > API Key Management. Use them to authenticate and interact with the category endpoints.
Once populated, reference the custom category in your policy rules exactly like any built-in category.
# SWG Platform API: Create and populate a custom AI Tools URL category # Step 1: Authenticate and obtain session token curl -X POST "https://your-swg-api.example.com/api/v1/authenticatedSession" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY", "username": "[email protected]", "password": "YOUR_PASSWORD", "timestamp": "1720483200000" }' # Step 2: Download the database CSV and extract the domain column as JSON curl -s -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \ "https://www.aitoolsblocklist.com/api/database/?action=download_database" \ | tail -n +2 | cut -d, -f1 | jq -R . | jq -s . > /tmp/ai_domains.json # Step 3: Create custom URL category with AI tool domains curl -X POST "https://your-swg-api.example.com/api/v1/urlCategories" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Cookie: JSESSIONID=SESSION_TOKEN" \ -d '{ "configuredName": "AI Tools - Blocked", "superCategory": "USER_DEFINED", "customCategory": true, "type": "URL_CATEGORY", "urls": ["chatgpt.com","openai.com","claude.ai","anthropic.com", "gemini.google.com","midjourney.com","runway.com", "character.ai","perplexity.ai","jasper.ai"], "dbCategorizedUrls": [], "description": "AI tool domains from AI Tools Blocklist feed" }' # Step 4: Activate changes curl -X POST "https://your-swg-api.example.com/api/v1/status/activate" \ -H "Cookie: JSESSIONID=SESSION_TOKEN"
Create custom URL categories under Policies > Web > URL List. Upload via CSV or automate with the REST API v2.
Token-based auth via tokens generated under Settings > Tools > REST API. Use the URL list endpoint to manage lists inline with real-time protection policies.
While some SWG platforms offer app risk scoring that rates apps on enterprise readiness, our feed classifies by function. Create policies like "block all AI image generators regardless of risk score" or "allow AI code assistants only if the risk score exceeds a threshold."
Navigate to Web Security > URL Categories > Custom Categories. Supports bulk domain import via text file upload and API-driven management with bearer token auth.
The platform evaluates custom categories inline alongside built-in classifications. A domain can match both — policy action is determined by rule precedence, with custom categories evaluated first.
All major AI tools communicate over HTTPS. Without SSL inspection, your SWG sees only the destination domain in the TLS SNI field and DNS queries — enough for basic domain-level blocking, but not for advanced controls.
SSL inspection becomes essential for three use cases that most organizations eventually require.
Some AI services share a domain with non-AI functionality (e.g., app.vendor.com/ai-assistant vs. app.vendor.com). Without SSL inspection, blocking the domain blocks the entire application. With decryption, your SWG examines the URL path and applies different actions per resource.
When employees paste source code, financial data, or customer records into AI chatbots, the content travels inside encrypted HTTPS POST requests. With inspection, the DLP engine examines the request body in real time and blocks requests containing sensitive data patterns.
Some organizations want to log or analyze AI tool responses — for example, detecting AI-generated code imported into production repositories or AI content published on the organization's behalf. This requires full SSL decryption in both directions.
Sufficient for domain-level blocking — no certificate deployment, zero performance impact.
Required for URL-path-level policies, DLP content inspection, and response analysis.
Many organizations need a nuanced approach: allow employees to use approved AI tools while preventing sensitive data uploads. Inline DLP integrated with your SWG makes this possible.
Your SWG detects a request to a domain in the AI-tools custom category.
SSL inspection decrypts the HTTPS traffic to expose the request body.
The DLP engine inspects the text payload — chat messages, file uploads, or API calls — for sensitive data patterns.
If content matches DLP patterns (credit cards, SSNs, proprietary code, custom dictionaries), the request is blocked and the security team is alerted.
# Automation script: Sync AI tool domains to your SWG custom category # Run daily via cron to keep the SWG category current #!/bin/bash SWG_CLOUD="your-swg-api.example.com" API_KEY="YOUR_SWG_API_KEY" FEED_KEY="YOUR_BLOCKLIST_API_KEY" CATEGORY_ID="CUSTOM_01" # Authenticate to SWG SESSION=$(curl -s -X POST "https://$SWG_CLOUD/api/v1/authenticatedSession" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d "{\"apiKey\":\"$API_KEY\",\"username\":\"[email protected]\", \"password\":\"$SVC_PASSWORD\",\"timestamp\":\"$(date +%s)000\"}" \ | jq -r '.cookies[0]') # Fetch current AI tool domains (database CSV → JSON array) DOMAINS=$(curl -s -H "X-API-Key: $FEED_KEY" \ "https://www.aitoolsblocklist.com/api/database/?action=download_database" \ | tail -n +2 | cut -d, -f1 | jq -R . | jq -s .) # Count domains for logging COUNT=$(echo $DOMAINS | jq 'length') echo "Syncing $COUNT AI tool domains to SWG category $CATEGORY_ID" # Update the custom URL category with current domains curl -s -X PUT "https://$SWG_CLOUD/api/v1/urlCategories/$CATEGORY_ID" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Cookie: JSESSIONID=$SESSION" \ -d "{\"configuredName\":\"AI Tools - Blocked\", \"urls\":$DOMAINS, \"description\":\"Auto-synced from AI Tools Blocklist - $(date -I)\"}" # Activate the configuration change curl -s -X POST "https://$SWG_CLOUD/api/v1/status/activate" \ -H "Cookie: JSESSIONID=$SESSION" echo "SWG sync complete: $COUNT domains pushed at $(date)"
Modern SWG platforms have evolved into full CASBs, enabling activity-level controls beyond allow-or-block. With our AI-tool categorization, you can apply granular cloud app controls per activity type.
Real-time protection policies apply different actions based on activity type: browse, upload, download, post, share, or edit. Craft policies like "allow browsing AI tools for research, block all uploads and posts."
Cloud Firewall rules and DLP policies can be scoped to your custom AI-tools URL category for targeted enforcement.
The CASB module identifies application-specific activities and applies policy per action type, enabling per-activity control over AI tools.
Inspect HTTP POST bodies to AI-tool domains for sensitive data patterns:
Exact data match (EDM) and document fingerprinting for sensitive content:
Custom categories, DLP scoping, browser isolation, and per-department rules all lean on the same continuously maintained AI domain map.
Instead of managing per-URL policy manually, SWG vendors can load our full classification database into their categorization engine and classify web requests from an in-memory copy. The database refreshes daily, so classifications stay current with no external lookup in the request path.
User navigates to a domain → SWG checks its in-memory copy of the database → gets the classification (or "not AI") → applies policy. Entirely local, so it adds no perceptible latency to request evaluation.
SWG vendors ingest our database alongside their own URL database. Customers see "AI Code Assistant," "AI Image Generator," or "AI Writing Tool" as native categories — the classification comes from our data, enforcement uses the vendor's existing framework.
Load the CSV into a hash set or dictionary for O(1) individual lookups; a batch check is a simple set intersection. Poll action=database_info and re-download when last_updated_unix changes.
# Download the classification database once (refresh daily) curl -s -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \ "https://www.aitoolsblocklist.com/api/database/?action=download_database" \ -o /var/cache/ai_blocklist.csv # Single lookup — prints the CSV row (domain,category,subcategory) if listed grep "^midjourney.com," /var/cache/ai_blocklist.csv # Batch check — intersect a list of domains with the local copy tail -n +2 /var/cache/ai_blocklist.csv | cut -d, -f1 | sort > /tmp/ai_domains.txt sort /tmp/domains_to_check.txt | comm -12 - /tmp/ai_domains.txt # Refresh check — poll metadata and re-download when last_updated_unix changes curl -s -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \ "https://www.aitoolsblocklist.com/api/database/?action=database_info"
| Column | Purpose | Vendor Use Case |
|---|---|---|
domain | The AI tool's domain — the lookup key | Index into a hash set or trie for inline evaluation |
category | One of 18 functional categories | Category-level policy: allow approved code assistants, block consumer chatbots |
subcategory | Finer-grained classification (172 subcategories) | Granular exceptions and reporting segmentation within a category |
Every classification is served from the SWG's own copy of the database, so there is no external API call in the request path — inline evaluation adds no perceptible user impact even at high request volumes.
Three columns — domain, category, subcategory — parse with any standard CSV library and load directly into whatever data structure your categorization engine already uses. 18 categories, 172 subcategories.
The database updates daily. Poll action=database_info on your own schedule, compare last_updated_unix with your stored value, and re-download only when it changes — ideal for off-peak maintenance windows.
A production SWG integration follows a four-layer architecture. Understanding each layer helps security architects design a deployment that is both performant and resilient.
Pulls updated domain classifications from our API and transforms them into SWG-compatible formats. Runs as a scheduled task — cron job, Lambda function, or SOAR playbook (Tines, Cortex XSOAR, Torq).
For SWGs with custom URL categories, the cache is the category itself — maintained in memory and evaluated inline. For real-time API integration, use Redis, Memcached, or an in-process hash map. Set TTLs to 24 hours for recently verified domains and 4 hours for older ones.
Where classification meets enforcement. The policy engine checks the destination against the AI-tools category and determines the action based on configured rules.
Five possible enforcement actions, configured per policy rule.
| Action | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Block | Deny the request and serve a block page |
| Allow | Permit the request without restriction |
| Caution | Display a warning interstitial the user must acknowledge |
| Isolate | Route through Remote Browser Isolation — AI tool renders in a sandbox with copy-paste and uploads disabled |
| Log-Only | Permit the request but generate a log entry for monitoring |
Instead of blocking or allowing unrestricted access, RBI lets employees interact with AI tools in a sandboxed environment. The AI tool renders on a remote server — only pixels stream to the user's browser.
A single "AI Tools" category is insufficient for enterprise policies. Engineering needs code assistants, marketing needs image generators, and legal needs everything blocked. Our 18-category taxonomy enables precisely this granularity.
| Platform | Approach | Per-Department Scoping |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Web Gateway | Create up to 18 custom URL categories, one per category-specific feed endpoint | Separate URL filtering rules per user group referencing different category sets |
| SWG Platform B | Create multiple URL lists, each in distinct real-time protection policies | Scope via SCIM group mapping to different user groups |
| SWG Platform C | Create multiple custom categories per AI-tool type | Associate with policy groups aligned to organizational structure |
Each category is maintained independently, with new domains classified within 24 hours of discovery.
Allow "code-development" and "data-analytics" categories. Block all others. Apply DLP inspection to allowed categories to prevent proprietary code uploads.
Allow "image-visual" and "marketing-ai" categories. Block "text-language" to prevent unvetted AI-generated copy. Isolate allowed tools via RBI.
Block all 18 categories. Log all access attempts. Alert compliance officers on repeated attempts. Zero tolerance for AI-tool usage in regulated functions.
Download the sample feed to test custom URL category creation on your platform. Or tell us your SWG platform and deployment model, and we will provide a ready-to-integrate feed package within 24 hours.
Tell us your SWG platform, deployment model, and category requirements. We will provide a custom integration package within 24 hours.