- Automated systems now generate more internet traffic than humans
- AI crawlers dominate data collection across most major online platforms
- Most automated traffic concentrates in retail, media, and travel sectors
Bots have officially surpassed human users as the dominant source of traffic on the internet, new research has claimed.
The State of AI Traffic report by Human Sec found automated traffic grew nearly eight times faster than human activity in 2025.
“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,” said Stu Solomon, CEO of Human Security.
Article continues below
Three categories of AI-driven traffic
The report divides AI-driven traffic into three distinct categories based on how automated systems interact with websites.
Training crawlers represent the largest share at 67.5%, and these systems primarily collect data for building and improving AI models.
AI scrapers account for roughly 31.9% of traffic, focusing on real-time data extraction for search tools and AI assistants that need up-to-date information.
A small but rapidly expanding segment known as agentic AI made up just 1.7% by the end of 2025.
However, this last category grew nearly 8,000% over the course of the year due to its ability to act independently on websites.
One of the most notable shifts is that AI tools are no longer limited to passive observation of online content.
In 2025, approximately 77% of agentic activity occurred on product and search pages, with smaller but notable shares extending into account login flows, authentication steps, and even checkout pages.
This pattern indicates a move toward AI systems participating directly in online commerce rather than merely supporting it from the sidelines.
AI-driven traffic is also highly concentrated across both sectors and operators.
More than 95% of all AI-driven traffic comes from just three industry sectors: retail and ecommerce, streaming and media, and travel and hospitality.
On the operator side, a small number of companies dominate the landscape, with OpenAI responsible for roughly 69% of observed AI chatbot traffic, followed by Meta and Anthropic.
This rapid growth is creating security concerns as AI shopping assistants operate on the same login pages and checkout systems that attackers target.
There is an increase in scraping attempts, account takeovers, and fraudulent activity, which implies the gap between legitimate automation and malicious traffic is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish.
Nevertheless, the idea of AI traffic does not spell doom or malicious activity by itself, since common features like Google AI Overview and autofill are part of this traffic.
“This notion of machine bad, human good just is not realistic,” Solomon said.
“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.”
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
