Web scraping is the automated technique of extracting data from websites, allowing users to gather information for various purposes, such as market research, sentiment analysis, and training machine learning models. This process involves using software tools or scripts to navigate web pages, retrieve content, and structure the data in a usable format. Web scraping can be beneficial for AI applications, providing large volumes of data that may not be readily available in structured datasets. However, ethical considerations and legal regulations must be taken into account, as some websites may have terms of service that restrict automated data collection.