The web is increasingly populated by autonomous AI bots, with OpenClaw as a symbol of a broader shift toward bot-dominated online activity. Recent data from Akamai shows that AI bot traffic already accounts for a meaningful share of web traffic, signaling a move beyond traditional human browsing.
In addition to scraping for training data, chatbots and AI agents are now capable of retrieving real-time information from the web—such as up-to-date prices, schedules, and news summaries—to augment their outputs. This dual capability is driving both commercial opportunities and new challenges for site operators.
Industry observers suggest the internet could become primarily bot-driven in the coming years. “The majority of the Internet is going to be bot traffic in the future,” notes a senior executive at TollBit, a firm that tracks web-scraping activity. The statement underscores a market shift as automated agents increasingly populate the digital ecosystem.
Publishers remain wary of bot scraping, particularly for training AI systems and reproducing copyrighted material. At the same time, a growing subset of bot traffic is designed to bypass familiar defenses like robots.txt and other anti-scraping measures, according to TollBit’s findings. Some bots now mimic normal browser behavior to avoid detection.
Companies are responding with tools to monetize the access that bots require, rather than merely block it. Pay-per-crawl models, anti-bot services, and concepts like generative engine optimization (GEO) are gaining traction as businesses seek to formalize machine-to-machine access and value exchange between content creators and AI systems.
The evolving landscape raises questions about data access, privacy, and the future economics of the web. As the arms race intensifies, the look and feel of the internet—along with how businesses operate online—could be reshaped by ever more capable, orchestraed AI agents.
