An AI bot is software that uses automation, and sometimes AI techniques, to carry out repeated online actions. Some bots follow fixed scripts, while others use machine learning or large language models to adapt their behavior, choose responses, or mimic human activity more convincingly. In practice, the term covers everything from simple crawlers to more advanced agents that can navigate websites, fill forms, and react to changing page content.
AI bots matter in cyber security because they can scale abuse far beyond what a human operator could do. Attackers use them for credential stuffing, account creation, scraping, fraud, and checkout manipulation, often blending malicious traffic with normal user behavior. Defenders respond with rate limits, behavioral analysis, device fingerprinting, proof-of-work, bot management, and identity checks. The key security challenge is telling legitimate automation from abusive automation in real time, especially in high-value systems like retail, payments, and login flows.