Bots and AI 'replacing' humans as main source of online traffic
Bots and AI are replacing human users as the main source of internet traffic.
Bots and AI are replacing human users as the main source of internet traffic.
According to new research, automated traffic grew almost eight times faster than human activity in 2025.
CEO of Human Security Stu Solomon, whose company's State of AI Traffic report unveiled the findings, said: "The internet as a whole was created with this very basic notion that there's a human being on the other side of the computer screen, and that notion is very rapidly being replaced."
In the report, AI-driven traffic is spit into three categories based on how the automated systems are interacting with the websites.
Training crawlers, which dominated with a share of 67.5 percent, primarily collect data for the purpose of building and improving AI models.
AI scrapers, which make up around 31.9 percent of traffic, are focused on extracting real-time data for AI assistants and search tools, which require up-to-date information.
The smallest segment, agentic AI, had a 1.7 percent share by the end of last year, but it grew by almost 8,000 percent because it is able to act independently on sites.
Elsewhere in the report, it was noted that AI tools no longer simply give passive observation of online content.
Last year, around 77 percent of activity happened on product and search pages, suggesting AI systems are now directly involved in online commerce.
Over 95 percent of all AI-driven traffic is split between three sectors - retail and ecommerce, travel and hospitality, and streaming and media.
It should be noted that Google AI Overview, autofill and other common features are included in the AI traffic.
Solomon explained: "This notion of machine bad, human good just is not realistic.
“You have to live in a world where machines are acting on our behalf, and we have to establish a level of trust that’s persistent over time.”
