Increase of AI bots on the Internet sparks arms race
Summary
WIRED reports that AI bots are increasingly shaping web traffic, sparking an arms race between bot operators and defenses. TollBit and Akamai data show a meaningful share of visits coming from AI scraping for training and real-time information, with bots bypassing robots.txt and defenses becoming more sophisticated. The piece covers responses from scraping firms, ideas like monetizing machine-to-machine access, and the broader impact on publishers and business models.