Dead Internet theory

Generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) are a type of large language model (LLM) that employ artificial neural networks to produce human-like content.[10][11] The first of these models was developed by the company OpenAI.[12] These models have created a significant amount of controversy. In one example, Timothy Shoup of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies stated that, "in the scenario where GPT-3 'gets loose', the internet would be completely unrecognizable."[13] He predicted that in such a scenario, 99% to 99.9% of content online might be AI generated by 2025 to 2030.[13] These predictions have been used as evidence for the dead internet theory.[3]

James Betker, an employee of OpenAI, has compared GPT technology to an information virus.[14]

being able to automatically produce arbitrary content that is indistinguishable from human-generated content at scale is the death knell of the web as we know it.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot whose 2022 release to the general public gave new attention to the dead internet theory.[6][15] Before this, the dead internet theory mostly emphasized government organizations, corporations, and tech-savvy individuals, but ChatGPT put the power of AI in the hands of average internet users.[6][15] This technology caused concerns that the Internet would become filled with content created by people through the use of AI that would drown out organic human content.[6][15][16]

In 2016, the security firm Imperva released a report on bot traffic and found that bots were responsible for 52% of web traffic, the first time it surpassed human traffic.[17] This report has been used as evidence in reports on the dead internet theory.[1]

In the past, the social media site Reddit allowed free access to its API and data, which allowed users to employ 3rd party moderation apps and train AI in human interaction.[16] In a controversial move, Reddit moved to charge for access to its user dataset, demonstrating that the value of selling access to the data was worth alienating some users.[16] Companies training AI will likely continue to use this data for training future AI. As LLMs such as ChatGPT become available to the general public, they are increasingly being employed on Reddit by users and bot accounts.[16] Professor Toby Walsh of the University of New South Wales stated in an interview with Business Insider that training the next generation of AI on content created by previous generations, the content could suffer.[16] University of Florida professor John Licato compared this situation of AI-generated web content flooding Reddit to the Dead Internet Theory.[16]

Several accounts on Twitter started posting tweets starting with the phrase "I hate texting" followed by an alternative activity, such as "i hate texting i just want to hold ur hand", or "i hate texting just come live with me".[1] These posts received tens of thousands of likes, and many suspected them to be bot accounts. These accounts have been used as an example by proponents of the dead internet theory.[1][8]

The percentage of user accounts run by bots became a major issue during Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.[18][19][20][21] During this process, Musk disputed Twitter's claim that less than 5% of their monetizable daily active users (mDAU) were bots.[18][22] During this dispute, Musk commissioned the company Cybra to estimate what percentage of Twitter accounts were bots, with one study estimating 13.7% and the second estimating 11%.[18] These bot accounts are thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of the content generated.[7] This incident has been pointed to by believers in the dead internet theory as evidence.[7]

There is a market online for fake YouTube views to boost a video's credibility and reach broader audiences.[23] At one point, fake views were so prevalent that some engineers were concerned YouTube's algorithm for detecting them would begin to treat the fake views as default and start misclassifying real ones.[23][1] YouTube engineers coined the term "the inversion" to describe this phenomenon.[23][24] YouTube bots and the fear of "the inversion" were cited as support for the dead internet theory in the "Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe" thread.[1]

Numerous YouTube channels and online communities, including the Linus Tech Tips-forums, have covered the dead Internet theory, which has helped to advance the idea into mainstream discourse.[1]