There's more than one issue here and it's not the teleporting gathering bots that discourage me the most - it's the ones that don't teleport (and instead just use a recorded patrol path with set hotspots) that are so rampant right now. The teleporting ones - which seemed to be mostly run by RMT at first actually seem to be declining in numbers from what I've personally seen on my server. The less blatant (but still blatant) patrol path/hotspot bots however are increasingly common - at most gathering locations I go to there is more of this type of botting going on day after day from node to node nonstop by the same "players".

Looking at forums online, the impression is you can safely bot on your character during your offtime/sleep with no repercussions in this game as SE isn't taking any action if you aren't blatantly RMT associated (a lot like the environment in FFXI for years).