By 2027 there will be more AI-powered bots than humans browsing the internet, according to Cloudfare CEO

The presence of ‘bots’ powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on the web is increasing to the point that they could surpass humans in 2027as Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has warned.

Prince explained in an interview during the SXSW conference in Austin (United States), reported by TechCrunch, that ‘bot’ traffic on web pages is expanding as the use of generative AI advances. Specifically, because These ‘bots’ are capable of visiting more pages to collect information and respond to user queries.

For example, if a user wants to purchase a product themselves, they will consult a limited number of links, while if they ask a chatbot like ChatGPT to search for that product and similar ones, the bot will analyze thousands of web pages to find it.

While the Bot traffic on the web was 20 percent before the emergence of generative AIthe trend is for the number of ‘bots’ to surpass humans in a couple of years. “With the rise of generative AI and its insatiable need for data, we are seeing an increase that leads us to suspect that, By 2027, the amount of bot traffic online will exceed the amount of human traffic online,” Prince has warned.

CONSEQUENCES

This constant increase in ‘bot’ traffic can lead to problems with website servers. Faced with this, the manager has pointed out the need to develop new technologies with isolated environments for AI agents.

“What we’re trying to look at is how to build that underlying infrastructure that allows you, as easily as opening a new tab in your browser, to run new code that can then run and serve existing agents,” Prince said.

The CEO of Cloudflare has compared the situation to when internet traffic increased during the Covid-19 pandemicin which several servers were close to collapsing after registering massive user traffic on streaming platforms. However, on that occasion it was able to stabilize, while the forecast for the current trend is less optimistic.

“Unlike Covid, where it skyrocketed for two weeks and then stabilized at a new high, we are seeing internet traffic grow and grow without stopping, and we don’t see anything that is going to slow it down or stop it,” Prince said.