Threat Report: AI Bot Activity Increases 300%, Publishing Industry Targeted

Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM) published a "State of the Internet (SOTI)" report titled "Protecting the Publishing Industry: Navigating the Age of AI Bots" on April 8, 2026, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The report details the impact of AI bots on the digital publishing ecosystem. Key findings include a 300% increase in AI bot activity in 2025. The media industry, encompassing publishers, was the second most targeted globally, accounting for 13% of AI bot traffic incidents. Specifically, AI bots targeting publishing-related companies constituted 40% of total AI bot activity, indicating content-rich websites are primary targets for automated scraping. The report attributes this rise to companies deploying AI bots for large language model (LLM) data collection and to enhance AI-powered search tools. While AI training crawlers generate the most automated traffic, AI fetchers, which retrieve content in real-time to answer user queries directly via AI assistants, pose a more immediate threat by reducing the need for users to visit original content creators' websites. This shift has negatively affected publishing industry revenues. The SOTI report revealed that in Q4 2024, AI chatbots resulted in approximately 96% less referral traffic compared to traditional Google Search, significantly diminishing a crucial source of readership and revenue. Specific findings highlight OpenAI as the largest generator of AI bot traffic targeting media companies, with publishing-related entities receiving 40% of all OpenAI AI bot requests. AI training crawlers accounted for 63% of all AI bots targeting the media industry, with 37% specifically aimed at publishing-related companies. AI fetchers represented 25% of total AI bot activity targeting media, with 43% directed at publishing-related companies. Patrick Sullivan, Akamai's Chief Technology Officer for Security Strategy, stated that the fundamental change in how people obtain information is impacting the publishing industry. He noted that AI bots erode core revenue streams like advertising and subscriptions, increase infrastructure costs, and decrease brand exposure. The report proposes strategies to address these issues, including new security approaches and a practical AI bot management checklist for risk mitigation and content protection in the publishing sector. This is the 12th annual SOTI report from Akamai, providing insights into cybersecurity trends and web performance based on data from Akamai's cybersecurity infrastructure, which processes a significant portion of global web traffic.