But this bandwidth load on Webhosts, websites, and the internet infrastructure is a very serious problem. I am absolutely sure they are trying to destroy the internet as we know it now and completely replace it with their AI services and information control. This is going to absolutely rape the hosting business and independent hosting and independent information sources.
Websites are dropping like flies because they just cannot handle the bandwidth load. And oddly enough there are no hosts helping their customers with filters to block this huge demand from AI constantly stealing data from their databases. The only tool available right now is CloudFlare. How convenient for CloudFlare right? The #1 content censoring tool in the industry...
When before we had just a couple dozen webcrawler bots to deal with, now we have millions maybe billions hitting our databases because now every individual can become a webcrawler using AI... It is unsustainable...
Is this a problem for low-ranked websites?
Don't most AIs spider only higher ranked sites, like Wikipedia?
Whenever I ask Grok a question, it seems Grok only checks a few sites. A few dozen for more esoteric questions. But always, only the popular, higher ranked sites.
Agree completely - I folded an informational website recently that had been online for over twenty years. The bots utterly destroyed bandwidth and database connection limits on a regular basis. They weren’t the only reason, but they were the deciding factor.
What you say is all true. I mostly use Perplexity.ai Pro which has been provided free for a year since I have 5-year-old Samsung phone. I run perplexity using mostly the Grok4 model. When I ask it to do a comparison between two products. It checks dozens of websites before posting its conclusion back to me. It often makes mistakes that are easily refutable, when I point them out it checks dozens more websites to verify.
I imagine that the service uses far more bandwidth than Google ever thought about. Still, I have a business hosting account with Hostinger that I paid upfront for 4 years at $3 a month. It has 200GB of storage space and I can host up to 100 websites with it, and it has unlimited bandwidth. So a site hosted with that host this type of downloading activity makes no difference.
On the other hand, I also host websites locally and if they started getting a lot of requests for pictures and video that I have up... this could cause problems. It depends on how things are setup. But I understand your concerns. My nextdoor neighbor is a software engineer for Amazon. This sounds like an interesting topic of discussion.
Here is what Grok has to say in its own defense:
“The growth of AI services is indeed straining internet infrastructure through massive increases in data center power demands, bandwidth requirements, and overall network traffic, but experts do not predict an imminent “implosion” of the entire system; instead, it’s leading to targeted investments, innovations, and policy responses to enhance capacity and resilience. While challenges like grid overloads and bandwidth surges are real, the internet’s distributed architecture and ongoing expansions make total collapse unlikely in the foreseeable future.[1][2][3][4][5]
## Current Infrastructure Strain
AI workloads are driving unprecedented demand for data centers, with global spending projected to reach $371 billion in 2025, a 44% year-over-year increase, primarily for computing resources that consume vast amounts of electricity equivalent to powering five million homes. This has caused grid stress in key regions, including harmonic distortions, load warnings, and seven-year waits for grid connections, as AI data centers create concentrated 24/7 power loads that challenge existing utility infrastructure. Bandwidth demands are also soaring, with data center interconnects expected to grow at least 6X over the next five years due to AI’s need for rapid data movement between facilities, leading to a 330% surge in overall data center bandwidth as of mid-2025.[2][3][6][5][7][1]
## Future Projections
By 2030, AI could double global internet traffic strain, but projections show data center capacity expanding 33% annually to meet this, potentially reaching 92 GW by 2027 with a 17% CAGR, though downside scenarios adjust to 14% if AI adoption slows. The “dead internet theory” highlights risks from bot-generated content (now 51% of traffic), potentially flooding networks with synthetic data and eroding trust, but this is more a content quality issue than a structural failure. While some warn of an AI bubble bursting like the dot-com crash due to overinvestment, historical parallels suggest growth will stabilize rather than implode the system, with AI reshaping rather than destroying infrastructure.[8][6][9][10][11][12][13]
## Mitigation Efforts
Industry leaders are responding with $1 trillion in 2025 AI infrastructure investments, including doubling colocation capacity, deploying 800 Gb/s fiber optics, and exploring decentralized AI models to reduce latency and central loads. Power solutions involve nuclear restarts, renewables, and AI-optimized grid management, while networking firms like Ciena and Equinix are building resilient, metro-based facilities to handle AI’s real-time demands without widespread outages. Policy measures, such as U.S. government incentives for energy-efficient data centers and international standards for AI ethics, aim to prevent collapse by fostering sustainable expansion.[14][15][3][4][16][17][13][2]
[1](https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/power-and-utilities/data-center-infrastructure-artificial-intelligence.html)
[2](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/resiliency-becomes-watchword-as-ai-strains-u-s-infrastructure/)
[3](https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/global-survey-explores-networking-needs-for-ai-era)
[4](https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2025/m06/cisco-research-a-major-infrastructure-shift-is-underway-ai-could-double-the-strain-or-solve-it.html)
[5](https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/networking/data-center-bandwidth-soars-330-driven-by-ai-demand)
[6](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/how-ai-is-transforming-data-centers-and-ramping-up-power-demand)
[7](https://blog.zones.com/impact-of-ai-adoption-on-it-infrastructure-in-2025)
[8](https://www.galaxy.com/insights/perspectives/dead-internet-theory-collapse-online-truth)
[9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory)
[10](https://www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-how-the-ai-bubble-will-pop)
[11](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/ai-power-expanding-data-center-capacity-to-meet-growing-demand)
[12](https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/ai-dot-com-bubble-parallels-history-explained-companies-revenue-infrastructure/)
[13](https://research.contrary.com/deep-dive/the-economics-of-ai-build-out)
[14](https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2025/10/ai-infrastructure-midyear-2025-update-and-future-technology-considerations)
[15](https://www.ifminvestors.com/news-and-insights/thought-leadership/ai-at-a-crossroads/)
[16](https://empirixpartners.com/the-trillion-dollar-horizon/)
[17](https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2025/01/08/how-ai-is-influencing-data-center-infrastructure-trends-in-2025/)
[18](https://www.flexential.com/resources/report/2025-state-ai-infrastructure)
[19](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1gtdfno/ai_will_destroy_the_internet_sooner_than_we_expect/)
[20](https://aimagazine.com/articles/how-ai-will-continue-to-impact-the-data-centre-industry)”
Except for going to a few sites I have found that the internet is becoming more useless than not.
Searches are terrible.
The Internet as we know it is going away.
The response from Grok itself is an example which highlights bandwidth usage. It listed 20 of the sites that it used as reference, but there were obviously many more checked out. Most of these were likely already cached because the response was quick, but it makes you realize the huge amount of resources that are tapped to come up with conclusions.