OpenAI, Meta, and ByteDance are the top sources of AI bot traffic hitting publishers, with fetcher bots posing the bigger revenue threat

Akamai analyzed application-layer AI bot traffic and found that publishing accounted for 40% of all AI bot activity within the media sector, more than any other media sub-vertical, with OpenAI generating the most traffic through three separate bots covering training, AI search, and real-time content retrieval. Training crawlers made up 63% of AI bot activity targeting media in H2 2025, but Akamai argues fetcher bots, which grabbed 24% of activity and directed 43% of that at publishing, pose a more immediate revenue threat because they pull article content to answer chatbot queries without sending users to the publisher's site. Publishers responding to the activity are using blocking, tarpitting, and delay tactics, though Akamai cautions against blanket blocking since some AI companies are willing to pay for licensed content access.