AI agent traffic surges as security systems struggle to detect impostors
New reports show automated web traffic rising sharply as malicious bots impersonate AI assistants and expose security gaps.

New reports show automated web traffic rising sharply as malicious bots impersonate AI assistants and expose security gaps.
People Inc.'s Jonathan Roberts on blocking bots by default, the 18 Napsters of content, and why AI is spending in the wrong place.

Publishers are lobbying for a federal bill that would require stealth crawlers to identify themselves and disclose their purpose.

News UK CTO Tom Jackson said about 20% of traffic over six months was non-human, with 6% of total traffic blocked as malicious bots.

DataDome found malicious bot traffic grew nine times faster than human traffic, while AI agents increasingly reached login and payment flows.
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Cloudflare will block training and agent crawlers by default on ad-supported pages as it moves toward pay-per-use compensation.

Keeping unauthorized AI crawlers out is an increasingly difficult game. That should change what publishers spend their energy fighting for.

Cloudflare says default AI crawler blocking is creating scarcity that pushes AI companies to license publisher content, and pay-per-use is next.

Not every bot in your logs is an enemy. The ones publishers keep shutting out are often the ones building authority in AI answers.

Companies say the collaboration enables newsletter publishers to manage AI bot traffic, improve visibility in AI-powered search tools and protect archives
