By Guest: Rupesh Chokshi (LinkedIn)
Company: Akamai
Show Name: Secure By Design
Topic: Application Security
AI bot traffic has grown 300 percent, and the implications go far beyond infrastructure load. In this conversation, Rupesh Chokshi, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Application Security at Akamai, explains how this explosive surge is fundamentally challenging the economics of digital business. AI bots are scraping content at unprecedented scale, consuming resources without delivering any customer value, transactions, or revenue. For publishers, SaaS providers, and digital commerce platforms, this represents an existential question about the future of their business models.
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The traffic surge is driven by automation at scale. AI bots crawl websites, collect information, and ingest data for machine learning models. Akamai’s State of the Internet Report shows that every industry is impacted. Publishing, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology companies are all serving digital infrastructure to bots that may never yield value. The bots are not customers. They are not prospects. They are extracting content to train AI systems that will ultimately compete with the original sources.
Traditional web economics relied on a clear path. A user searches for information. A search engine returns results. The user clicks through to a publisher or business. That click generates value through subscriptions, advertising, or transactions. AI bots are breaking this model. They scrape content behind paywalls. They extract information without attribution. They repackage insights and deliver them directly to end users, bypassing the original sources entirely.
Publishers face the most immediate threat. Content that once drove subscriptions and ad revenue is now being scraped and summarized by AI systems. The end user gets their answer without ever visiting the publisher’s site. Search engines are integrating AI responses that pull from scraped content but do not send traffic back to the source. The business models built on SEO and click-through revenue are being disrupted in real time.
Rupesh Chokshi has spent the summer working with publishers on the Akamai platform to navigate these challenges. The conversations center on difficult questions. Do you block AI bots completely? Do you allow certain bots and block others? Do you create licensing agreements and monetize access? Each choice has trade-offs. Blocking bots protects content but may reduce discoverability. Allowing scraping may preserve SEO value but undermines direct traffic and revenue. Monetization requires new business models and negotiating leverage that many companies do not yet have.
Healthcare is another area of concern. Public health information is being scraped, repackaged, and delivered through AI interfaces. Users searching for medical advice increasingly get AI-generated responses instead of being directed to authoritative healthcare sources. The next generation of users may never learn to evaluate source credibility. They will rely on AI summaries without understanding where the information originated or whether it has been validated.
SaaS and technology companies face similar dynamics. Documentation, technical content, and product information are being ingested by AI systems. These systems then provide answers to user questions without sending traffic to the vendor. The original creators lose visibility and control over how their content is used and presented.
The transformation is happening fast. Enterprises are struggling to balance infrastructure costs, content protection, and business model innovation. The 300 percent surge in AI bot traffic is not just a security issue. It is a fundamental shift in how value is created and captured on the internet. Companies that do not adapt risk losing relevance as AI intermediaries control the relationship with end users.
Rupesh Chokshi’s insights highlight the urgency of this moment. Business leaders need to decide now whether to resist, accommodate, or capitalize on AI bot traffic. The decisions made today will shape digital economics for years to come.
