AI Bot Traffic Surges 300% Globally, Disrupting Online Business Operations

AI bots traffic has surged 300%, is disrupting online business: Akamai report

AI bots have surged 300% in a year, disrupting online operations, Akamai's 2025 report shows. These bots, driven by content scraping, now dominate digital traffic, harming publishers and ecommerce. Malicious bots like FraudGPT and WormGPT inflate costs and distort metrics, leading to faulty analytics and falling ad revenues. AI bots are rapidly taking over online traffic, surging 300% in the past year, according to a new report by cybersecurity and cloud computing company Akamai Technologies. As per the Digital Fraud and Abuse Report 2025, these bots generate billions of requests, disrupting digital operations and skewing analytics. "They now compose nearly 1% of total bot traffic across Akamai's platform," the company said. The spike is being driven largely by content scraping, where bots automatically copy website content without permission. This is hurting publishers and content-driven businesses, leading to faulty analytics and falling ad revenues due to bots extracting value without giving any in return. Major findings * The publishing sector has been the most affected, with 63% of AI bot triggers, highlighting how AI bots threaten web-based businesses. * Online businesses too are under strain due to harmful bots. This is not to say that AI bots are not useful. Some bots support functions such as search engine indexing and accessibility. However, malicious bots such as FraudGPT, WormGPT, ad fraud bots, and return fraud bots (bots that exploit ecommerce return policies for profit) are increasing costs, slowing sites, and distorting key metrics. * Commerce sees the most AI bot activity, with over 25 billion bot requests during a two-month observation period (July-August 2025). * In healthcare, more than 90% of AI bot triggers come from scraping, mostly by search and training bots.Beyond scraping, AI tools make it easier for both skilled and new attackers to impersonate others, carry out social engineering (tricking people into revealing information), run phishing campaigns, and commit identity fraud using AI-generated fake documents and images. "The rise of AI bots has moved from the security team's concern to the boardroom's business imperative," said Rupesh Chokshi, senior vice president and general manager, Application Security, at Akamai. "Business leaders must act now to build frameworks that ensure secure AI adoption, manage evolving risks, and safeguard digital operations -- or find themselves playing catch-up."

India Records Highest AI Bot Activity in APAC, Surging 300% Year-on-Year: Akamai Report

In healthcare, more than 90% of AI bot triggers stem from scraping, largely by search and training bots. To defend against these threats, the report encourages organizations to develop capabilities aligned with the three OWASP Top 10 frameworks for web applications, APIs, and large language models (LLMs). These frameworks help security teams map known vulnerabilities -- such as broken access control, injection flaws, and data exposure -- to their organization's fraud risk tolerance, allowing for smarter prioritization of defenses.