Akamai Reports 300% Surge in AI Bot Traffic Disrupting Digital Businesses

Akamai Technologies released its latest State of the Internet (SOTI) Digital Fraud and Abuse Report 2025, revealing a dramatic 300% year-over-year surge in AI-driven bot traffic targeting websites across industries. The report highlights how automated scraping and impersonation campaigns are distorting analytics, undermining ad revenue, and driving new forms of digital fraud.

According to Akamai, AI bots now account for nearly 1% of total traffic across its global platform, generating billions of automated requests that disrupt normal site operations. The company attributes much of this growth to content scraping, which has become a major concern for publishers and content-heavy businesses.

The publishing sector saw the sharpest impact, with 63% of AI bot activity targeting media properties. The commerce industry logged more than 25 billion bot requests in a two-month span, while healthcare organizations reported that more than 90% of AI bot triggers came from scraping by search and training bots.

Akamai noted that while some automation is beneficial—such as bots for indexing or accessibility—malicious AI tools like FraudGPT and WormGPT are being used for ad fraud, social engineering, and identity theft, worsening the strain on security teams and infrastructure.

"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."

The report also outlines defensive measures, urging organizations to align their protections with the OWASP Top 10 frameworks for web applications, APIs, and large language models. These frameworks help map vulnerabilities, such as access control failures and data exposure, to enterprise risk tolerance.

In addition to detailed attack data by region and sector, the report includes a guest column from the CISO of FS-ISAC, a breakdown of AI scraper bot categories, and practical guidance for balancing compliance and AI risk management.

Now in its 11th year, Akamai’s State of the Internet series continues to analyze global cyber trends using insights from infrastructure that supports over one-third of global web traffic.