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AI Bots Surge to 2% of Web Traffic, Sparking Arms Race

2/4/2026

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Summary

Story summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) bots now account for 2% of web traffic, up from 0.5% in early 2025, per TollBit.
The TollBit report describes an escalating arms race between content publishers and AI scrapers.
The report notes a 400% rise in bots that ignore robots.txt.
TollBit and Cloudflare are developing tools to manage bot access.
As AI evolves, its impact on web traffic and business operations will grow.

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Story summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) bots now account for 2% of web traffic, up from 0.5% in early 2025, per TollBit.
The TollBit report describes an escalating arms race between content publishers and AI scrapers.
The report notes a 400% rise in bots that ignore robots.txt.
TollBit and Cloudflare are developing tools to manage bot access.
As AI evolves, its impact on web traffic and business operations will grow.