Hello John and Doves,
It seems like so much is
'out of control' or 'not what was suppose to happen', or
'its happening long before it was expected to happen'...and,
in this letter, I'm referring to AI bots and non-AI
bots.
Not all bots are AI - many
have 'no intelligence' and work off a simple program.
They have no reasoning, learning or understanding of
context. They cannot make decisions beyond what they
are programmed to do. Other bots are AI backed - they
can have systems powered by language models - they can
generate their own responses, interpret meaning, and adjust
their behavior. They can do things they were not
programmed to do. They can 'recognize emotional tone
in text, identify the intent behind a question, understand
grammatical relationships between words and pick out
specific entities like names, location and dates'...They can
hold a "genuine conversation".
"Generative AI bots, like
modern chatbots build on large language models, go further
still. They don't just understand input and select
from pre-written answers. They generate entirely new
content, including text, images and audio, based on the vast
data they were trained on. A rule-based chatbot's
output depends entirely on what its developers wrote in
advance. A generative AI chatbot produces responses
that never existed."
In this letter I wrote about
'bots' and how they are 'taking over' the internet.
And because of bots, humans now often times have to 'prove'
they are human!
And I wrote about 'what is a
bot'?
I also wrote about AI agents
(antigenic AI) and what these 'agents' are doing in
2026. AI agents are the newest category of
'bots'. These are 'goal-driven, capable of multi-step
reasoning and designed to resolve complex problems from
start to finish. They pull information from multiple
systems simultaneously and make context-aware decisions
rather than following a predetermined path.
The difference in bots can be equivalent to a
difference between a calculator and a laptop.
What Is A
Bot?:
Bot
is short for "robot". Basically, it is a "software
application that performs tasks over the internet, often at
a speed and scale far beyond human capability."
"Bots
can be programmed to chat with users, search and index web
content, collect and analyze data, or even mimic human
behaviors in online environments. They power
everything from search engines and customer service chats to
social media automation and e-commerce recommendations."
Bots
fall into two categories: good bots and bad bots.
Good Bots:
Good
bots "operate within ethical boundaries and typically follow
rules set by website owners".
Search
Engine Bots: Googlebot, Bingbot and Amazonbot
"systematically scan websites, index new content and ensure
you get relevant search results in seconds."
Customer
Service Chabots answer common questions, help with
transactions, help track orders, deal with return politics,
etc.
Monitoring
and Analytic Bots: track website performance, monitor
website uptime, help site owners improve their services.
Content
Aggregator Bots: gather news or information, gather
job postings and present in an easy to read format.
"Good
bots are essential to how the internet functions
today. Without them, finding information, getting
help, or monitoring services would be far more difficult and
time-consuming."
Bad Bots:
Some
'bots' are less helpful - "spreading spam or attempting
breach accounts".
Spam Bots: they
flood forums, comment sections and inboxes with
"irrelevant or malicious messages, advertisements or
phishing links. Their goal is to trick users or
drive traffic to shady websites." They also collect
email addresses and phone numbers - then sent out spam
messages.
Scalper and Sneaker
Bots: they "scoop up limited-edition products or
concert tickets...leaving real customers empty-handed and
driving up resale prices."
Fake Social Media
Bots: they inflate flowers, likes..."distorting
perceptions of popularity and trust. They also
spread misinformation or amplify spam."
Credential Stuffing
Bots: they use stolen usernames, passwords to
attempt unauthorized login across various sites, leading
to potential data breaches."
Web Scraping
Bots: they "steal proprietary content or pricing
information in violate of site policies."
Chatterbots:
malicious ones appear in website chats or on social media
"posing as real people. They are programmed to sound
convincing, but their goal is to lure you into sharing
sensitive information." Phishing scams steal your
date and malware is secretly installed on your PC or cell
phone.
Botnets: "a
network of compromised devices working together under a
single command. In coordinated attacks - DDoS or
Distributed Denial of Service - flood a website with fake
traffic, overwhelming servers and causing the site to
crash.
Bad bots can "damage your brand's
reputation, compromise data security, disrupt business
operations and negatively impact the user experience."
Machines Generate More Web
Traffic Than People Now:
"..for the first time in the
internet's history, machines now generate more web traffic than
people." Over 57% of the web traffic is due
to bots. (worldwide)
"The internet was
architected around human usability and attention, and the
entire world of digital advertising...companies that
continue operating under that assumption that users are
human, risk misreading their own systems."
AI-driven traffic grew
"eight times faster than human traffic" in 2025. The
'problem' is agentic AI. An agentic AI bot can visit
thousands of sites compares to a human looking at five
sites.
Agentic AI bot traffic
increased from 1.7% in 2024 to 8,000% by the end of 2025.
Bots
Now Outnumber Humans Online And The Internet Was Never
Built For This
One study showed that in North America bots account
for 68.6% of the web traffic. So 31.4% is human
usage.
This article dated June 25, 2026 reported that
Cloudfare Radar measurements "show that human still
account for 36% of observed HTTP traffic, while bots
represent 64% of web traffic as of June 2026."
"AI agents can compare products, collect
information, fill forms, execute workflows and trigger
transactions. Some bypass websites entirely and
interact directly with APIx. Security researchers
increasingly describe this shift as moving from a "Search
and Click" internet to an "Ask and Execute" internet...
Why is this important? "Publishers and online
businesses already worry that AI systems collect
information without returning visitors. (Business
owners don't know if 'visitors' to their sites are human
or AI.) "Web infrastructure costs money. Every
request consumes bandwidth, storage, processing power and
protection systems. When automation increases,
businesses pay more to serve traffic that may never
convert into customers."
"According to the Radware 2026 report, malicious
bots represented 43% of holiday e-commerce traffic, nearly
reaching the volume of legitimate human shoppers."
This results in higher hosting and infrastructure
costs. Distorted analytics and conversion
data. Inventory hoarding and checkout abuse.
And lower trust in campaign performance."
"Companies now invest in bot management, behavioral
analysis, API security, identity verification and traffic
quality instead of pure visitor growth."
"The internet is still busy. The difference
is that more activity happens machine to machine."
"The hidden impact of bots isn't just a security
risk - it's actively shaping the digital landscape,
quietly eroding human critical thinking and creating a
fragmented global debate over AI ethics."
"Instead of assuming visitors are human, systems
may require proof of intent, proof of identity or proof of
authorization."
Back in the late 2010s, a theory was
developed: "Dead Internet". This theory states
that eventually bots and AI would be responsible for most
of the internet's activity.
It's estimated that 40% of Facebook posts are bot
generated. (Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he
wanted to know what % of the 'users' were really human.)
A report from Axios said that "AI generates 52% of
all online articles".
This article, dated January 7, 2026, reported that
"A new analysis from Kapwing shows a significant increase
in low-quality, AI-generated videos across YouTube, often
referred to as "AI slop" or "brainrot". The research
suggests that a notable portion of YouTube's feed now
consists of automatically generated content that
prioritizes volume and engagement over production
quality." More than 20% of YouTube's feed is
reported as "AI slop".
Final Thoughts:
This explains why we must at times, 'verify that we
are human'. And the system, CAPTCHA, is what I find
the most irritating: 'clicking on all the fire hydrants,
or buses, or crosswalks' - some of the pictures are
unclear and I never know if I'm suppose to click on every
single box that has a tiny part of the item they want me
to identify. One time I spent at least ten minutes
trying to get to the end of the "CAPCHA"!
Ridiculous.
As for YouTube, I've noticed the big uptick in AI
generated content.
And look at this
article from August 2024 and then look at the articles
below this from 2026 - AI use is growing exponentially!:
"As artificial intelligence agents become more
advanced, it could become increasingly difficult to
distinguish between AI-powered users and real humans on
the internet."
"AI could have the ability to create accounts, post
content, generate fake content, pretend to be human online
or algorithmically amplify content at a massive scale."
And look at these articles from 2026!
Are we better off without bots?
How did we do as a society in the 60s and 70s?
And
today, it's come down to this: verifying that we
are human. Will that be impossible to do in the
future? It looks like the 'bots' are taking over.
Maranatha!
Chance