How AI changed bot sophistication and scale

 Publishers don’t need bigger walls—they need dials. Here’s how to see, price, and shape LLM and agent activity instead of getting steamrolled by it.

If the last two years were about discovering that AI agents are vacuuming up the web, the next two will be about deciding what to do about it. Do you block, meter, license - or build your own agent and make the bots pay?

On this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal welcomes Aurélie Guerrieri, Chief Growth Officer at DataDome, a Forrester-recognized leader in bot defense. Together, they dive into the new reality of AI-driven traffic: from LLM crawlers and real-time “prompt-time fetching” to the rising tide of agentic activity that acts on users’ behalf. Instead of framing the debate as simply good bots versus bad bots, the conversation explores a more practical lens: identity versus intent, and how publishers can reclaim control, revenue, and visibility in an internet increasingly shaped by AI distribution.

Why this matters now

🔹Scale & speed broke the old defenses. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs - servers that cache and deliver website content from locations closer to users) and Web Application Firewalls (WAFs - security systems that filter and monitor HTTP traffic between users and web applications) still matter, but they adapt in minutes. Attackers now act in seconds and from distributed IPs that look like everyday users.

🔹AI changed the mix of traffic. DataDome sees enormous growth in prompt-time fetching - LLMs hitting your most valuable pages (latest articles, pricing, paywalled previews) 20:1 compared with traditional crawling in some cases.

🔹The business model is shifting. “Open web” ≠ “open season.” Publishers need to decide who gets access, for what, and at what price - and they need tooling that can enforce those choices in real time.

“AI is part of the problem—and part of the solution. We use AI to fight AI.”    -  Aurélie Guerrieri

How can publishers fight back against AI bots—and turn them into new revenue streams instead of lost traffic?

Key topics:

🔹Why the future of AI governance is about identity and intent, not just “good vs. bad bots”
🔹How prompt-time fetching targets publishers’ most valuable content in real time
🔹The rise of agentic activity and why it can be both powerful and dangerous
🔹Why static defenses like content delivery networks (CDNs) and web application firewalls (WAFs) are being outpaced
🔹How DataDome uses AI to fight AI, stopping more attacks and restoring visibility
🔹New monetization models: pay-per-fetch, APIs, and even building owned agents
🔹Lessons from Cloudflare vs. Perplexity and what they mean for publisher control
🔹Guerrieri’s advice to media leaders: measure, control, and experiment

Her bottom line: the future of publishing isn’t about keeping bots out, but about shaping how they come in—and making them pay for the privilege.

🎙 Guest:

 Aurélie Guerrieri | CGO,  DataDome | LinkedIn 

📩 And if you enjoyed this conversation, I’d encourage you to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app that you want. Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a rating or review — it really does help the show. And if you’re on YouTube, don’t forget to “like” the video and subscribe to the channel 🔔

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This episode of The Media CoPilot was produced by Pete Pachal, Executive Producer Michele Musso, and with video/audio editing by the Musso Media team. Produced by Musso Media. © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved.

Music: Favorite by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 License 

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