By 2023, AI and automated programs will have outperformed humans when it comes to using the Internet.

The Internet was born 30 years ago with the aim of connecting people from all over the world. But three decades later, we are going to stop being the majority in the great Network. In 2022 almost half of the Internet traffic is bots. With the advent of artificial intelligence, it is inevitable that we will be surpassed this year.

Imperva is a security company specialized in data protection. Prepares an annual report on the use of bots in the networkand the data for 2022 shows a growth in bots, to the point that almost surpass humans in traffic consumption.

Taking into account that several billion people use the Internet daily, some continuously, with a large consumption of bandwidth in the case of Netflix, downloads, etc., the data is impressive.

Bots conquer the Internet

According to the Imperva report, in 2022, 47.4% of all Internet traffic was consumed by bots. It is 5.1% more than the previous year. 52.6% of traffic is generated by humanswhich have lost that 5.1% of use.

Bad bots already occupy 30.2% of all Internet trafficincreasing by 2.5% compared to last year. “Good” bots generate 17.2% of traffic2.7% more than last year.

You can see it more clearly in this graph:

We are going to explain what these data mean.

A bot is an automated program that runs a task on its own on the Internet. Until recently they were just that, code that worked by itself. But since this year, they also enter Artificial Intelligence bots that perform tasks on their own, such as searches, downloads, content creation, etc. This is the case of ChatGPT, Google Bard, Stable Diffusion, MidJourney, and many others.

Within the bots, we have good bots and bad botsas specified by Imperva.

The good bots they are automated tasks that launch many Internet services and platforms. For example, search engine bots that index (add) new pages, bots that optimize the use of websites and check that there are no problems, information bots, etc.

Instead, evil bots have the purpose of harming, stealing or spying. These bots can carry out massive attacks on a website or services, impersonate a legitimate website or service to steal data and accounts, install viruses through email, generate spam, etc. And they are already 30% of all Internet traffic.

Another worrying fact in the report is that bots associated with espionage and war have increased by 142% in 2022on the occasion of the invasion of Ukraine, and the new Cold War that we live.

AI, the new queen of bots

These statistics are from the year 2022, when artificial intelligence had not yet broken in. In 2023, a new type of bot has begun to multiply. It is endowed with AI and is capable of doing endless tasks on its own.. Find information, create texts, images, sounds, music, and much more.

Examples we all know of AIs that behave like bots are ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Google Bard, Bing with GPT, and hundreds more already flooding the Internet.

Besides, these AIs can be used to spawn bots, good and bad, more easilywithout any programming knowledge. With which their number will grow even more.

It is inevitable that when Imperva publishes its 2023 report, bots already outperform humans by a good margin. It is possible that with good bots, we cannot do anything. But what 30% of internet traffic is generated by bad botsIt is a tremendously worrying fact.