Phoenix 24
The reported 1,700% figure measures annual growth, not the percentage of internet users that are robots.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
More than half of the traffic moving through Cloudflare’s network is now attributed to automated systems, including artificial-intelligence agents and conventional bots. The company also reported that daily requests generated specifically by AI agents increased by more than 1,700% compared with the previous year, reflecting the rapid expansion of software capable of browsing websites, consulting databases and interacting with digital services without continuous human direction.
The distinction between those measurements is essential. Robots do not constitute “more than 1,700%” of internet traffic, as the source headline suggests, because a share of a total cannot exceed 100% under this definition. The 1,700% figure describes the rate of growth in AI-agent requests. Meanwhile, the claim that automation has surpassed human traffic applies to requests observed across Cloudflare’s infrastructure, not necessarily every connection or user activity across the entire global internet.
Cloudflare describes the transition as the emergence of an “agentic internet.” Instead of merely delivering pages to human-operated browsers, networks must increasingly manage software agents that communicate with application programming interfaces, invoke AI models, execute transactions and interact with other machines. This requires stronger identity verification, automated authorization, monitoring and controls capable of distinguishing legitimate agents from malicious bots.
The transformation presents an economic challenge for publishers. AI systems may retrieve thousands of pages while returning few human visitors to the websites that produced the information. This imbalance increases infrastructure costs while weakening advertising and subscription models dependent on direct readership. Cloudflare has consequently introduced tools allowing website operators to identify, restrict or block AI crawlers and determine whether their content may be used for model training.
The company also has a commercial interest in emphasizing the transition. Cloudflare reported second-quarter revenue of $696.1 million, a 36% annual increase, and is positioning its global network as infrastructure for autonomous applications. Its measurements therefore reveal a significant technological trend, but they also support a corporate strategy built around selling the security, computing and payment systems that AI agents will require. The central issue is no longer whether machines are using the web, but who will control their access, verify their intentions and compensate the humans whose content gives those systems value.
Hechos que no se doblan. / Facts that do not bend.