The number of artificial intelligence bots on the internet is expected to surpass human users by 2027, according to the CEO of internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare. Matthew Prince made the prediction at the SXSW conference this week, citing the rapid growth of AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
Prince noted that web traffic composition has changed dramatically over the past six months. 'For a long time, the internet was about 20 per cent bot traffic,' he said. 'With the rise of generative AI, it's just an insatiable need for data. We're seeing a rise where we suspect that in 2027 the amount of bot traffic online will exceed the amount of human traffic.'
The tech boss warned that the surge in AI traffic could strain web infrastructure, particularly with the emergence of agentic AI, where bots perform tasks autonomously. He explained that AI bots typically visit a thousand times more sites than a human when completing a task like shopping or planning a holiday.
Prince called for new technologies to support the growing demand, stating: 'We're all going to have to invent new technologies to support what is being delivered.' A 2023 report from cybersecurity firm Imperva found that automated traffic already accounts for over half of all web activity, with 'bad bots' at record levels used for spamming and DDoS attacks.
