There have never been more conversations surrounding the 'dead internet theory' than right now, as an increase in bot-driven content and the rapid development of AI has caused many to wonder how long we have left of a human-dominated web — if it even exists any more.
Coined on forums back in 2021, the dead internet theory concerns the idea that there will eventually reach a point where the majority of content produced on social media and the world wide web is created by bots or AI.
Bots have always been a thing on the internet in some form, yet we've never quite seen the scale at which content is generated now, and it's likely even more prevalent than you think.
Cybersecurity company Imperva's 'Bad Bot Report' for last year revealed that nearly 50 percent of all traffic on the internet was coming from nonhuman sources, with 20 percent of that figure being from what's deemed as 'bad bots'.
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This amounts to a remarkable share of the internet in what was initially created to connect people across the world, and even some of the world's biggest tech leaders are on board with the scary theory.
Now, ChatGPT itself has weighed in on the veracity of the dead internet theory, determining quite how 'true' the idea of a bot-dominated web is, alongsidee outlining a timeline for exactly when it will 'take hold' of the internet.
Importantly, ChatGPT asserted that it doesn't believe that the dead internet theory is 'fully true' quite yet, illustrating that human activity still matters a lot on the internet, that not all bots are malicious in their activity, and that there's a variance between different platforms and domains.
It does, however, echo many experts by predicting that it will 'come true' eventually, as it's inevitable that the proportion of AI-generated content will only increase, and the lines between that and human-created content will continue to become blurred.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has predicted that this will drive innovation towards a new form of social media that increasingly values human-created content, and ChatGPT similarly attests that people will increasingly demand verification and 'proof of life'.
Additionally, the 'early dominance' of AI-driven content will seemingly begin to take hold in around 5 to 10 years, with a tipping point being achieved in 10 to 15 years that will see the majority of new content produced by nonhuman sources.
It won't necessarily be the case that humans are completely eradicated and the web is solely controlled and used by bots, but it won't be too long until the core tenants of the dead internet theory become a dead internet reality.