New Akamai report reveals APAC is the world’s second-most targeted region for automated web traffic, with India recording 3.2 billion malicious AI bot triggers
The growth of automated web traffic driven by AI-powered bots has exploded by an alarming 300 per cent globally over the past year, placing Asia-Pacific (APAC) as the second-most affected market after North America.
The Digital Fraud and Abuse Report 2025 from Akamai Technologies highlights a massive spike in activity across the region, which accounted for nearly one fifth (19.5 per cent) of all global bot traffic during the recording period.
Within APAC, India is the most heavily targeted country, recording 3.2 billion AI bot triggers. It is followed by Japan (2.8 billion) and China (1.7 billion), confirming that the region’s fast-growing digital economies are now primary targets for automated attacks.
Commerce & Media Bearing Brunt
The overall surge in AI bot activity—reaching over 10.5 billion triggers in APAC alone—is largely driven by widespread content scraping of web data. This activity, Akamai warns, is actively undermining traditional web-based business models.
As bots extract value without contributing to revenue, publishers and content-driven businesses are facing corrupted analytics and collapsing ad revenues. The sectors bearing the brunt of this trend in APAC are commerce and digital media, which combined recorded over 6 billion AI bot triggers.
The commerce sector alone accounts for 47 per cent of all AI bot activity in APAC, with retail making up nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of those commerce-related triggers, signaling aggressive data scraping aimed at online shopping platforms. Furthermore, the report suggests the rapid expansion of AI tools has made it easier for malicious actors to launch sophisticated impersonation attacks and commit identity fraud.
‘Watch & Learn’ Strategy
Despite the escalating threat, APAC organisations are adopting a notably cautious approach. Akamai found that a staggering 98.6 per cent of all AI bot traffic in the region was being monitored rather than blocked outright—a figure significantly higher than in North America (91.1 per cent).
Reuben Koh, Director of Security Technology and Strategy at Akamai, commented on this conservative stance. “Most organisations in the region are still in ‘watch and wait’ mode, monitoring closely but hesitant to intervene,” he said.
“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.
With training bots accounting for 73.7 per cent of all AI bot activity in APAC, reflecting rapid adoption of AI-powered tools and chat interfaces, businesses are under increasing pressure to develop new security frameworks to manage both helpful and harmful automated traffic.
The intelligence serves as a stark warning: while some bots are benign (like search engine indexers), the rapid commoditisation of malicious tools like FraudGPT and WormGPT means businesses must urgently develop secure adoption frameworks to protect their operations as the threat landscape evolves.
