Akamai Research revealed on Wednesday that Asia Pacific (APAC) businesses encountered over 10.5 billion AI Bots in just two months, underscoring rising risks amid rapid artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.

The cybersecurity and cloud computing company said in its new State of the Internet (SOTI) report that AI bots now account for a rapidly expanding share of web traffic, with activity surging by 300 percent over the past year.

The APAC region accounted for nearly one fifth (19.5 percent) of all bot activities globally, making it the second most affected market after North America.

According to the report, these bots generate billions of requests, significantly distorting digital operations and analytics.

It is noted that APAC alone saw over 10.5 billion AI bot triggers, a method used to detect AI bot requests, during the reporting period, led by India, Japan, China and Singapore.

This surge further contributed to the challenges in distinguishing between bot traffic driven by users with legitimate intentions and bot traffic driven by users with harmful intentions that may lead to digital fraud and abuse.

This spike is caused by widespread content scraping of web data, and it underscores how AI bots are actively undermining traditional web-based business models.

As bot traffic grows, publishers and other content-driven businesses are seeing corrupted analytics and collapsing ad revenues through bots extracting value without giving any in return.

Meanwhile, in APAC, commerce and digital media industries are bearing the brunt of this trend, recording over 6 billion AI bot triggers combined, signaling AI models are increasingly scraping data from fast-growing online economies.

The report also revealed that the rapid growth of AI-enabled tools has made it easier than ever for both experienced threat professionals and new malicious actors to launch impersonation attacks, conduct social engineering, distribute phishing campaigns, and commit identity fraud using AI-generated fake documents and images.

APAC stood out as the top region where 98.6 percent of AI Bot traffic were actively being monitored rather than being blocked outright, showing a high level of meticulousness.

According to the report, APAC accounted for 20.2 percent of global AI bot activity, making it the second-most active region worldwide after North America.

India, Japan, and China ranked among the top global targets for AI bots, recording 3.2 billion, 2.8 billion, and 1.7 billion triggers respectively.

Singapore ranked fourth among APAC, accounting for 899 million AI bot triggers.

The commerce sector (47 percent) is the primary target of AI bot activity in APAC, with retail surpassing hotel and travel, accounting for nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of all commerce-related triggers.

Training bots made up 73.7 percent of AI bot activity in APAC, reflective of rapid adoption of AI-powered tools and chat interfaces.

APAC organizations were the most cautious globally, choosing to monitor (98.6 percent) AI bot traffic rather than blocking or delaying (1.4 percent) it – well above North America (91.1 percent) – reflecting a “watch and learn” stance as companies evaluate emerging AI risks.

Globally, online businesses are under strain from both helpful and harmful bots, said the report.

Although some bots support functions like search engine indexing and accessibility, it highlighted malicious bots such as FraudGPT, WormGPT, ad fraud bots and return fraud bots are driving up costs, degrading site performance and skewing key metrics.

As AI-driven bots become core to many industries, it noted businesses need to develop frameworks for secure AI adoption, risk management, and resilience — and ensure that digital assets and operations remain protected as the threat landscape evolves.

“AI automation is expanding faster than many businesses in Asia-Pacific can adapt, and AI bots now account for a significant share of online traffic,” said Reuben Koh, Director of Security Technology and Strategy at Akamai.

“Most organizations in the region are still in ‘watch and wait’ mode, monitoring closely but hesitant to intervene. That caution is understandable as some AI bots can boost visibility by surfacing content in AI tools,

“But as automation becomes more pervasive, leaders will need to strike a balance between openness and control to ensure that AI driven traffic supports business growth without compromising data integrity or trust,” he added.

Powering APAC’s AI future through next-gen data center networks