India Tops APAC in AI Bot Activity as Global Automated Traffic Surges 300%: Report
New Delhi: India has recorded the highest AI bot activity in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, amid a staggering 300% global surge in automated traffic over the past year, according to a report released on Wednesday.
Cybersecurity and cloud computing firm Akamai Technologies reported that AI bots generated 3.2 billion triggers in India, making it the most targeted nation in the region, followed by Japan and China.
The report highlights a sharp rise in automated traffic driven by AI-powered bots attacking websites across multiple sectors. These bots, which account for nearly 1% of total bot traffic on Akamai’s platform, distort digital operations, analytics, and advertising performance.
A major driver behind the spike is content scraping, which disrupts traditional business models, undermines publisher analytics, and erodes advertising revenue. As a result, media and content-driven platforms are witnessing corrupted insights and falling ad revenues as bots extract value without reciprocation.
The report also warns that the proliferation of AI tools has made it easier for both professional threat actors and new entrants to execute impersonation attacks, phishing campaigns, and identity fraud using AI-generated fake documents and images.
Malicious bots such as FraudGPT, WormGPT, ad fraud bots, and return fraud bots are further inflating operational costs, degrading site performance, and skewing key business metrics.
Globally, the commerce industry accounted for the highest AI bot activity, with over 25 billion bot requests recorded during a two-month observation period. However, the publishing sector suffered the most, representing 63% of all AI bot triggers in the digital media space.
In the healthcare sector, more than 90% of AI bot triggers were attributed to scraping activities, primarily by search and training bots, the report added.
