AI Bots Are Taking Over the Internet—And It’s Happening Faster Than Anyone Expected

The viral virtual assistant OpenClaw—formerly known as Moltbot, and before that Clawdbot—has become more than just a quirky AI phenomenon. It’s now a symbol of a broader revolution that could fundamentally reshape how the internet functions. Instead of a place primarily inhabited by humans, the web may very soon be dominated by autonomous AI bots operating at machine speed.

A groundbreaking new report measuring bot activity across the web, combined with exclusive data shared with WIRED by internet infrastructure giant Akamai, reveals a startling reality: AI bots already account for a meaningful share of web traffic. But what’s even more concerning is the increasingly sophisticated arms race unfolding as these bots deploy clever tactics to bypass website defenses designed to keep them out.

“The majority of the internet is going to be bot traffic in the future,” warns Toshit Pangrahi, cofounder and CEO of TollBit, a company that tracks web-scraping activity and published the revealing new report. “It’s not just a copyright problem—there is a new visitor emerging on the internet.”

Most major websites currently try to limit what content bots can scrape and feed to AI systems for training purposes. (For context, WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast, along with other publishers, are currently suing several AI companies over alleged copyright infringement related to AI training.)

But another kind of AI-related website scraping is now on the rise as well. Many chatbots and other AI tools can now retrieve real-time information from the web and use it to augment and improve their outputs. This might include up-to-the-minute product prices, movie theater schedules, or summaries of the latest news.

According to the data from Akamai, training-related bot traffic has been rising steadily since last July. Meanwhile, global activity from bots fetching web content for AI agents is also on the upswing.

“AI is changing the web as we know it,” says Robert Blumofe, Akamai’s chief technology officer. “The ensuing arms race will determine the future look, feel, and functionality of the web, as well as the basics of doing business.”

In the fourth quarter of 2024, TollBit estimates that an average of one out of every 31 visits to its customers’ websites was from an AI scraping bot. Just one quarter earlier, in Q1 2024, that figure was only one out of every 200. The company reports that in Q4 2024, more than 13 percent of bot requests were bypassing robots.txt—a file that some websites use to indicate which pages bots are supposed to avoid. TollBit says the share of AI bots disregarding robots.txt increased 400 percent from Q2 to Q4 of last year.

TollBit also reported a 336 percent increase in the number of websites making attempts to block AI bots over the past year. Pangrahi explains that scraping techniques are getting more sophisticated as sites try to assert control over how bots access their content. Some bots disguise themselves by making their traffic appear like it’s coming from a normal web browser or send requests designed to mimic how humans normally interact with websites. TollBit’s study notes that the behavior of some AI agents is now almost indistinguishable from human web traffic.

TollBit markets tools that website owners can use to charge AI scrapers for accessing their content. Other firms, including Cloudflare, offer similar solutions. “Anyone who relies on human web traffic—starting with publishers, but basically everyone—is going to be impacted,” Pangrahi says. “There needs to be a faster way to have that machine-to-machine, programmatic exchange of value.”

The implications are staggering. As AI bots become more prevalent, websites will need to adapt or risk being overwhelmed by automated traffic that doesn’t contribute to their business models. The internet as we know it—a place where human interaction drives content creation and consumption—may be on the verge of a fundamental transformation.

This isn’t just about copyright or content scraping anymore. It’s about the very nature of online interaction. When autonomous AI agents outnumber humans on the web, what happens to social media? To e-commerce? To journalism? The answers remain unclear, but one thing is certain: the internet is evolving faster than our ability to understand or regulate it.

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