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

AI Summary (NQ-processed)

Akamai released its "State of the Internet (SOTI)" report, "Protecting the Publishing Industry: Navigating the Age of AI Bots," on April 8, 2026. The report indicates a 300% increase in AI bot activity in 2025. The media industry, including publishers, accounted for 13% of AI bot traffic incidents, making it the second-highest targeted industry globally. AI bots targeting publishing-related companies represent 40% of all AI bot activity. This trend, driven by data collection for LLMs and AI-powered search tools, has led to a 96% decrease in referral traffic from AI chatbots compared to Google Search in Q4 2024, impacting publishers' revenue. OpenAI generates the most AI bot traffic targeting media companies, with publishing-related entities accounting for 40% of all OpenAI bot requests. AI training crawlers constitute 63% of AI bots targeting the media industry (37% for publishing), while AI fetchers account for 25% (43% for publishing). Akamai CTO Patrick Sullivan noted the fundamental shift in information consumption and the erosion of core revenue streams for publishers. The report offers new security approaches and a bot management checklist.