AI and Bots Have Officially Overtaken Humans on the Internet, Report Finds
April 2026 — Artificial intelligence systems and automated bots now generate more internet traffic than humans, according to a new report released by cybersecurity firm Human Security. The report, titled State of AI Traffic, found that automated internet activity has officially surpassed human activity online.
Automated traffic refers to internet activity generated by software systems, including AI tools, bots, and automated services, rather than human users. The report found that automated traffic grew nearly eight times faster than human internet activity in 2025.
According to the report, the rapid growth of large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini played a major role in the surge of AI-generated internet traffic. AI-related traffic increased 187% between January and December 2025.
Human Security’s CEO said the internet was originally built on the assumption that a human was on the other side of every computer screen, but that assumption is now rapidly changing as machines increasingly act on behalf of humans online.
The report also highlighted the rise of AI agents — autonomous programs that can perform tasks online without human involvement. Traffic from these AI agents increased nearly 8,000% in 2025, showing how quickly automated systems are growing.
However, not all bot traffic is harmful. Automated traffic includes useful services such as search engine crawlers, AI assistants, autofill tools, and AI-generated search summaries. Experts say the internet is entering a new phase where machines and humans will operate together online.
The report’s data was based on activity processed through Human Security’s platform, which analyzed over one quadrillion internet interactions. Researchers noted that measuring total bot traffic across the entire internet is difficult, so the figures are estimates rather than exact numbers.
Industry experts say the rise in automated traffic has been accelerating since the launch of generative AI tools in recent years. At a recent conference, the CEO of Cloudflare said that bots made up about 20% of internet traffic before the generative AI boom, but predicted that AI bots could exceed human traffic by 2027 due to the growing demand for data by AI systems.
