The dead internet is approaching… Bots are outperforming humans for the first time.
The dead internet is approaching… Bots are outperforming humans for the first time.
5-13-2026
Information / Follow-up…
A recent report published by the French newspaper Thales, titled “Malicious Bots Report 2026,” revealed that bots (bots) accounted for 53% of total internet activity in 2025, surpassing human activity for the first time. Experts described this as a “pivotal” shift in the history of the World Wide Web.
The report indicated that 40% of internet traffic was classified as malicious bots, a 3% increase compared to 2024, while human activity declined to only 47%. This shift is attributed to the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence agents, capable of interacting independently with applications and making seemingly natural decisions. This has contributed to a 12.5-fold increase in AI attacks in a single year.
The report confirmed that application programming interfaces (APIs) and the financial sector were the most targeted, with APIs accounting for 27% of attacks and the financial sector accounting for 24% of all bot attacks, in addition to 46% of account takeovers.
The report indicated that approximately 17.6% of new websites in 2025 were created entirely using artificial intelligence, reinforcing the so-called “dead internet” theory, where automation largely dominates network traffic, and traditional human activity becomes marginal.
Cybersecurity experts warned that traditional protection strategies, such as IP address blocking or user-agent data analysis, are no longer effective, urging companies to adopt new security models that include behavioral analysis, access management, and API protection against cyberattacks.
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