Interview with Tom Howe of Hydrolix: AI Bots, the Friends, Foes, and Frenemies of Online Shopping

**Executive summary:** This interview with Hydrolix's Director of Insights Engineering explains the differences between good, bad, and malicious bots, outlines detection signals seen in web and CDN/WAF telemetry, warns of the business and SEO risks from blanket bot blocking (including costly mistakes), and advocates for nuanced, data-driven strategies that can mitigate harm and even leverage benign bots to increase sales as AI agents and proxies evolve.