The news: Retail traffic from AI shoppers overtook human traffic during the holidays, but merchants’ hesitance to opt in and malicious bot activity could dampen AI agents’ ability to integrate throughout the web.

• Automated shopping bots accounted for 57% of all ecommerce web traffic during the 2024 holiday season, per Radware’s 2025 Ecommerce Bot Threat report, up from 49% the year before.
• Malicious bots comprised 31% of ecommerce web traffic. They can scrape content, make fake account registrations, or abandon carts.