(VALUETAINMENT) – Nearly half of all internet traffic can now be attributed to AI bots, a new report revealed late last month, with two-thirds of those bots functioning for malicious purposes. The report, compiled by cloud computing giant Akamai Technologies, highlights the ever-escalating threat that automated web-scraping bots pose to the online retail industry.
According to Akamai’s annual “State of the Internet” report, entitled Scraping Away Your Bottom Line: How Web Scrapers Impact E-Commerce, malicious bot activity has skyrocketed in recent years as the internet becomes increasingly automated. As the company states, “bots compose 42% of overall web traffic, and 65% of these bots are malicious.”
While online bots can be used by businesses for legitimate reasons, they are far more commonly used for “competitive intelligence and espionage, inventory hoarding, imposter site creation, and other schemes that have a negative impact on both the bottom line and the customer experience.” This is particularly prevalent in the e-commerce sector, where revenue-generating web applications are often left open to high-risk bot traffic.
