Will your server allow you to review your stats the last several months? Go check, I’ll bet your hit traffic has doubled or tripled in the last six months... It has happened to every domain owner I have discussed this issue with. But member traffic and participation has not increased.
I use Grok a lot and am ramping up ChatGPT queries. What I always struggled to find in Google those systems find in seconds. They find the right sites to query and bring back the info in an easy to use format.
But, I see them regularly scraping info from 5-10 sites and maybe taking a look at another 5 to 10. It supports what you are saying that sites are getting hammered with AI requests.
The nice thing is I don’t need ad blockers, “Reader” pages, or “Hide distracting items” myself to cut out the BS crap.
I guess I'm the odd sample. Actually it's decreased since January to about 70 percent today of the January numbers, and the largest source of crawlers seems to be our very own nation.