British businesses are having their websites targeted by an overwhelming surge in anonymous bots that extract content, data and value from their websites. Bots are nothing new, but bot traffic has now overtaken human traffic for the first time – and 99 per cent of bot traffic is unwanted or unverifiable by the website owner, says the News Media Association.
This lack of basic transparency leaves website owners unable to identify bots and block malicious traffic. It prevents them from negotiating a fair price for access to their valuable content and can even force their websites offline altogether.
The scale is escalating fast: overall AI bot traffic rose by 300 per cent in 2025, with agentic AI traffic rising by almost 8,000 per cent. Media websites are among the primary targets, along with online retailers and cultural institutions. News publishers have seen significant falls in web traffic as AI chatbots use bots to pull content from their websites in real time without permission, meaning the user never visits a publisher’s website.
Damian Hinds, the Member of Parliament for East Hampshire, yesterday presented a Private Member’s Bill that would require the operators of bots that systematically access and copy content from UK websites to declare their identity and the purpose of their activity. It will move the internet away from the wild west and ensure that website owners can protect their content, consumers and technological infrastructure.
The costs of serving bot traffic are borne by web operators. In a world of exponentially growing bot traffic and harvesting of data and content to build and operate AI models, bot transparency is vital to the health of the online ecosystem. Some responsible operators already recognise and embrace this by identifying the bots they use and the intended purpose of their bot activity. Such transparency imposes little burden on bot operators.
Yet many bots routinely fail to identify themselves or state their purpose, with many actively disguising themselves as human traffic or providing false information to evade detection and gain access to UK websites without authorisation.
Some companies deploy bots to feed a growing black market of copied web content, estimated at over $1 billion globally. This and other bot traffic not only extracts value with no return to the website owner, but it can also slow or crash a website in a manner similar to a cyber attack.
The Bill will allow website owners to identify who is trying to access their website and why. This will give them the information they need to deter harmful or costly traffic, allow it if beneficial, or even point bot operators to opportunities to pay a fair price for the value of the content.
Damian Hinds, Member of Parliament for East Hampshire, said: “Too many UK businesses are having their websites raided for valuable content, with no visibility on who is extracting the value from their work. But a functioning economy depends on property rights, and being able to trade and be paid. If news outlets can’t secure fair remuneration for their work, through subscription or ad revenue, journalism will become unsustainable – and there’d be nothing left for the bots to scrape from.
"My Bill will do one simple thing: if you run an online bot that accesses a website and takes content and data, you have to say who you are and what you'll do with what you take. This isn’t heavy-handed regulation, and it doesn’t seek to regulate AI models or dictate behaviour. It just requires basic transparency. It will give British website owners, from online retailers to local newspapers, the tools to see who's at their door and the ability to strike a fair deal for what they've built.”
Theo Bamber, chief executive of the News Media Association, said: "For years, news publishers have watched their journalism taken without permission by unidentified bots. This means they don’t know who is accessing their content and then have no say in how it’s used. This Bill will change that by giving publishers, and thousands of other businesses, the right to see who’s trying to gain access to their sites and then negotiate any access on their own terms. It introduces a basic online standard that is long overdue in the AI training gold rush. A standard that will be good for creators of trusted journalism, good for British Business and vital in the pursuit of a healthier internet.”
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