Bots and AI Now Dominate Internet Traffic, Humans Only 42.6 Percent

Cloudflare logo. Bots and AI agents now account for 57.4 percent of internet traffic, surpassing human activity. (Photo: Cloudflare)

JAKARTA - For the first time, internet traffic from bots and artificial intelligence or AI agents has surpassed human activity. Cloudflare data shows that 57.4 percent of requests to websites on its network now come from automated systems.

As reported by Anadolu Agency quoted Sunday, June 14, humans only account for 42.6 percent of web traffic. This shift is mainly driven by the surge in the use of chatbots and AI agents that can scour the internet, collect information, compare data, and carry out online tasks with little or no human intervention.

Cloudflare is a web infrastructure company whose services are used by many sites for security, content distribution, and internet traffic management.

One of the founders and CEO of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, said the change happened faster than expected.

"Wow, it happened faster than I expected," Prince wrote on X, as quoted by Anadolu Agency.

He previously predicted that new bots would surpass human traffic by 2027. However, the growth of agentic traffic is accelerating. This term refers to the activity of AI agents that work independently on the internet, such as opening a website, reading a page, or comparing information.

According to Prince, AI is able to process information on a scale far beyond humans. In an interview with NBC News, he said that a person usually opens about five sites before buying goods online. AI chatbots, on the other hand, can compare thousands of pages in a much shorter time.

This trend is not only happening in web searches and online shopping. Social media is also increasingly influenced by automated accounts that publish content and comments. Some of these accounts are used for political or propaganda purposes.

In the same report, Anadolu Agency said that an online ecosystem specifically created for AI is also starting to emerge. One of them is Moltbook, a platform designed only for AI agents.

According to the Italian news agency ANSA, Moltbook attracted 1.6 million autonomous agents in the first week. The agents are said to develop their own communication patterns and community structures without human involvement.

Major technology companies are getting into the game. Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are investing in the development of agentic AI, that is, AI that can explore sites and run online tasks independently.

Prince attributes this development to the "dead internet theory". The theory says that bots can eventually dominate online activity, while content and human interaction are increasingly marginalized.

But Prince also sees other opportunities. According to Prince, AI agents can give birth to a new economic model on the internet.

"From a certain point of view, we may be on the verge of a new golden age for the internet," he said.