Automated web activity has eclipsed human use of the internet, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Human Security. The company’s State of AI Traffic study, drawing on data from its Human Defense Platform, found automated traffic grew nearly eight times faster than human activity during 2025, with AI-driven traffic up 187% over the year. Agentic systems—AI tools that take actions on users’ behalf—surged almost 8,000% from a low base, exemplified by emerging agents like OpenClaw. While automated requests include benign features such as Google’s AI Overviews and autofill, the report underscores growing measurement uncertainty, given the reliance on self-declared user-agent strings that can be noisy or spoofed. CEO Stu Solomon said machines are becoming the dominant counterpart online, arguing the industry must build durable trust frameworks for machine actions. The findings align with a broader shift flagged by Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince, who has predicted bots will exceed human traffic by 2027 as generative AI’s appetite for data expands.
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