The internet you use every day could soon be dominated by artificial intelligence. Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, says AI bots may generate more traffic than humans in the next year or two, marking a major shift in the way the web works.
Speaking to TechCrunch about current trends, Prince said bot activity is increasing rapidly as AI systems crawl and interact with websites at scale.
Before the advent of generative AI, bots were responsible for only 20% of internet traffic. Most of this traffic came from search engines like Google and some malicious activity. Now that number is rising much faster.
Why is AI bot traffic growing faster?
According to Prince, the main reason for this increase is the way AI systems work. He explains that a person might visit a handful of websites to complete a task. An AI agent, on the other hand, can visit thousands of pages in seconds to collect information and complete the same task.
This leads to a huge increase in traffic. AI systems are constantly scanning and gathering information to function, meaning they generate far more requests than human users ever could. This growing demand could push bot traffic beyond human activity in the coming years.
How sandboxing could help manage the surge in AI traffic
Prince believes this shift will require entirely new systems for AI. One idea is to create temporary “sandboxes” where AI agents can perform tasks and shut down when they are finished.
For example, if you ask an AI to plan a vacation, it could set up a special environment to browse, compare, and organize information before it disappears.
These sandbox environments would allow bots to perform tasks without overwhelming websites or infrastructure.
Prince believes that millions of these sandboxes could be created every second. However, handling data traffic at this scale would also require extensive infrastructure, including more data centers and servers to support constant AI activity.
For Prince, this isn’t just another technology trend. “I think what people don’t appreciate about AI is that it’s a platform shift,” he said, comparing it to moving from desktop to mobile. “AI is another platform shift… the way you consume information is completely different.”
