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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-24/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Jabberwocky79 As a freelance professional with my own web presence, I wonder how this will change the nature of web design over time. If the majority of web browsing is done by bots, will that place less emphasis on good UI principles and artistic layouts that promote engagement with humans? Will websites be dumbed down in appearance and rely more on agents reading code? Reply
Kindaian Most sites will be behind user access restrictions. Want to access it? login. No login, no access. That's the only way to work around the bot invasion. If the majority of the accesses are from bots, who is paying for that access? Because the content authors (website owners) for sure are paying for the bandwidth / servers of their own sites. And now, the premises of having the site out there are broken. Reply
bill001g I wonder what the advertisers think about this. They already pay huge money for ads that are never seen because of ad blockers. Do they get a 50% discount because a bot that will never buy anything saw the ad rather than a person. Reply
Notton Dead Internet Theory comes to fruition. Does anyone remember how the internet was advertised as a way to bring the world community together? And how that never panned out, instead creating isolation from your local community, and associated mental health issues. And now even the internet (human) communities are getting eroded by bots. Now's a good time to go touch some grass. Reply
Miasma I own a website with a message board. We don't sell anything, it's just a small community discussing stuff but it has been around for decades so we have a *lot* of posts and content (you can see where this is going). But since late last year, the data usage of that board skyrocketed to tens of GB per day with a number of views that would rival large corporations. Aside from wasting tons of bandwidth (that I'm paying for), those bots are so aggressive that they overwhelm my host and take the board offline (since I'm on a shared plan and not a dedicated server), then when the board goes offline (user exceeded the 'max_user_connections' limit), those bots think they have been IP banned, so the only reasonable thing to do is to try again using even more different IP to access the data. And here something some people may not be aware of: most ISP rent their IP to AI firms and trainers because it's free money for them. So banning IP is useless because when bots want your data, it's like a DDoS attack. And just yielding to them is useless, because they will come back again and again. So you can sure bet that this board is now only accessible to registered users. Do I like doing that? Not at all, but what else I am supposed to do? I spend more time dealing with these AI crawlers than I spend making my site better…. This is how damaging "AI" has become. Reply
LAMINI Agentic models are the latest fad, or so it seems? Several years ago it was, "do you think this whole AI thing will affect m ywork?" Then, about 1-2yrs ago it was, "If youre not already using AI youre gonna fall behind". And now, "if youre not using agents already, youre not going to be marketable". You guys getting the same vibes? Reply
Artemx86 It was predictable, right. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/bots-have-now-passed-human-traffic-online-cloudflare-boss-laments-says-agentic-traffic-wasnt-expected-to-eclipse-real-people-until-next-year#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
- Tom's Hardware Unfiltered: Computex 2026, Day 2 — Interviews, roundtables, and the first day at the Nanggang Exhibition Center
- Microsoft unveils Project Solara AI, a chip-to-cloud platform built to power a new generation of 'agent-first' enterprise devices — hardware designed to run AI
- Elon Musk's SpaceX secures 100% property tax exemption for planned $55 billion Terafab semiconductor factory in Texas — county approves 35-year deal worth hundr
- Silicon Motion increases sales of SSD controllers amid NAND shortage, but expects NAND shortages to get worse in 2027 — 'supply conditions will become even wors
- NVIDIA Research Advances Robotics From Simulation to the Real World
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.