Key Takeaways
- Gray bots are automated web programs, often tied to AI, whose impact can be both helpful and harmful.
- They fuel AI development but also strain websites, distort traffic numbers, and scrape content without consent.
- This bot traffic is rapidly increasing, creating major issues for online publishers and advertisers.
- Identifying and managing these sophisticated bots is a growing challenge for the online world.
A new kind of automated program, dubbed “gray bots,” is quietly reshaping the internet.
These aren’t your typical good or bad bots. Cybersecurity firm Barracuda coined the term “gray bots” to describe programs like AI crawlers and scrapers that blur the lines between useful activity and harmful exploitation, according to a report from Digiday.
While maybe not as well-known as generative AI, these bots are already widespread. They play a role in powering AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, gathering data to train large language models, and enabling new automated online tasks.
However, they also create significant problems. Gray bots can overwhelm websites, skew analytics that businesses rely on, and copy valuable content without permission. Their activity can inflate traffic metrics and lead to wasted ad spending.
Barracuda tracked millions of requests from generative AI bots between December and February, noting activity from Anthropic’s ClaudeBot and TikTok’s ByteSpider. Adam Khan from Barracuda mentioned these bots are “throwing off a lot of the analytics” and often hide their origins.
Publishers are feeling the pressure. Ziff Davis, owner of sites like Mashable and CNET, recently sued OpenAI, claiming its GPTBot excessively scraped their sites despite instructions to limit access. Wikipedia also reported a 50% rise in infrastructure costs since January 2024 due to bots and AI scrapers.
Security experts warn that this AI-driven traffic can harm key advertising metrics like click-through rates. Independent researcher Zach Edwards stated that websites with original content are essentially “under a gray bot attack,” urging publishers to find ways to get compensated for their work.
The scale of the issue is growing. DoubleVerify reported that AI scrapers accounted for 16% of general invalid traffic last year, with overall invalid ad requests hitting record highs. HUMAN Security blocked over 215 billion scraping attempts in 2024, mainly targeting retail, e-commerce, and media sites.
Major tech companies like OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, and TikTok deploy these bots. This leaves website owners with tough choices: blocking the bots might protect resources but could hurt their visibility in new AI-driven search results.
Detecting these bots is tricky. They are becoming more sophisticated, sometimes mimicking human behavior well enough to bypass security measures like CAPTCHA, and often don’t identify themselves clearly.
Dealing with the influx involves various approaches. Some websites block specific bots, while others negotiate paid access deals. Legal frameworks like the EU’s AI Act impose rules on data scraping. New security solutions are also emerging, aiming to identify bots and even create systems for bots to pay for access, treating them as a new type of user rather than just a threat.
