What is the dead internet theory?

More often than not, conspiracy theories become so far-fetched that they are both ridiculous and hard to fully disprove to die-hard believers. But the dead internet theory is one conspiracy that could hold more water than others thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and agents.

This theory first appeared to surface on the Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe forum in 2021, when a user by the name of "IlluminatiPirate" started a thread called "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake." Citing posts from major online discussion forums like 4Chan, the theory posits that non-human bots are responsible for the majority of online activity and content creation.

What does the dead internet theory propose?

At a top level, the concept is that bots automatically and rapidly craft things like social media posts that are algorithmically tuned for engagement — effectively farming clicks, comments and likes on platforms like Facebook and TikTok. This is because more interactions and engagement can lead to more advertising revenue.

But beneath the surface lies the more insidious notion that the accounts engaging with such content are also bots and AI agents — meaning that all this activity is happening between machines alone, with no human interaction. An even deeper layer to the theory suggests government organizations are even using bots to manipulate human opinions.

This created the idea of a "dead internet," with said death supposedly having happened around 2016 or 2017. This whole theorem was given more traction in an article titled "Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet 'Died' Five Years Ago" in The Atlantic.

How much truth is there to the dead internet theory?

It's difficult to pinpoint how much of the web is populated by machines — with various studies suggesting contradictory information. Research by the cyber security company Imperva found that bots account for around half of all internet traffic. This traffic tends to be from bots used to generate fake advertising revenue; YouTube among other sites has fallen foul of this, with bots wielded to artificially inflate engagement.

Another pre-print study published by AWS on 5 June 2024 reported that 57.1% of all sentences on the web are machine-generated translations. As for how many websites were found to be hosting AI-generated content, this stands at 13.1% — according to an ongoing study by Originality.ai.

The prevalence of bots, and other tools like online translators, has been a known phenomenon for years — but it doesn't necessarily mean that the internet is "dead." Equally, while generative AI — from large language models like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini to dedicated image creation tools — can automate content creation, it’s arguably not advanced enough to pass human scrutiny. AI-generated content often contains misinformation such as "add glue to a pizza sauce," or is full of poor grammar and spelling that will alert humans to its AI-made nature.

But there’s scope for concern thanks to the rapid evolution of this technology. As AI evolves to create agents that can act independently of specific human instructions, it’s possible to foresee such agents interacting with each other and favoring AI-made content and structured information over that created by humans. This could lead to a situation whereby internet content is tailored to appeal to AI agents rather than other humans, in a bid to market products and farm engagement. We have seen the signs of this new economy already following the first cryptocurrency transaction between AI agents — with no human involvement.

Where this may end up is speculative for now, however. A deeper concern is the use of AI by humans to rapidly generate poor-quality content to feed content-hungry platforms and search engines. Given the lack of finesse to many generative AI models, and their inability to grasp human nuance, leaning on AI to make content could foster an internet flooded with low-quality information, articles, art and more, all designed for "engagement" and little more.

Is the internet a graveyard? Far from it

What might seem like a disturbing theory currently has no compelling evidence to support it. The nature of content-sharing and things going "viral" means the same posts can keep resurfacing; one could say the same about songs popularized a decade ago still appearing in adverts despite the musicians being far from the zeitgeist.

Equally, the somewhat insipid nature of search engine optimization (SEO) is compelling humans to create content in such a methodical way it can feel like a robot created it. The sad truth? It may just be a young writer trying to meet a quota or hit certain key phrases, inserting a number of links and following countless other processes and procedures that the likes of Google Search favor at any given time.

Related: AI models trained on 'synthetic data' could break down and regurgitate unintelligible nonsense, scientists warn

This does not mean that the majority of the internet is now plagued by bots. This very article is optimized to some degree. Live Science’s publisher Future Publishing also has a dedicated division established to support its publications’ web pages to rank higher in search engines.

However, where some of this could be automated, Google — with its leading search engine — has been dogmatic about penalizing articles that try to game its Search algorithm. Furthermore, with publications that provide articles offering advice, especially buying advice, Google chases after content that proves a human has used a service or product being recommended. This can range from citing real-life examples of, say, a phone’s battery life, to having original photos that show a device in use. So the current SEO guidance is effectively pushing for more human-made and human-centric content.

Be careful what you read — especially on social media

When it comes to social media platforms — including X, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram — the waters around dead internet theory get muddied. While there’s no doubt that millions of people use such platforms — the ability to set up bots to post based on keywords lends weight to the idea that the internet is festooned with smart agents rather than humans.

Thanks to generative AI, plenty of AI-generated Instagram models and influencers now lurk online rendering seemingly perfect renditions of often scantily clad people.

Of course, the rise of influencers and social media stars and the myriad of filters — plus the idea that one’s life isn’t accurately represented in social media — already lends a veneer of fakery to participating online.

Despite the evolution of social media to feel like an advertisement tool at times, it still holds a huge influence over millions. The Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 have been partially credited to a movement built on Facebook. More recently, riots spearheaded by right-wing activists in the UK erupted from misinformation spreading on social media.

With that in mind, there’s potential for AI agents to promote false information and interact with each other to boost engagement, thus fanning future flames. A historic study published in Nature found that from 14 million messages spreading 400,000 articles on Twitter (now known as X) in 10 months over 2016 and 2017, "social bots" disproportionately played a role in spreading articles from "low-credibility sources." This led to the amplification of content — what we would term "going viral."

This does leave room for concern. Given that the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report 2024 found that social media was a source of news for 48% of Americans, there’s still a huge number of people who are ripe targets for influence by bot-propagated misinformation.

The dead internet conspiracy theory doesn't actually mean that all your online interactions are with bots, wrote AI researchers Jake Renzella and Vlada Rozova in a blog post for the University of New South Wales, Sydney. But it is a reminder that one should be skeptical of public social media interactions. Furthermore, the idea that the internet comprises human-made content consumed by other humans is an assumption we can no longer make.

Humans and bots surfing the web together

The pursuit of SEO to capture human attention has already led to somewhat similar articles muddying search results — some more useful than others. This also served as the inspiration for a humorous, satirical article about the "best printer 2024".

One could even argue this article itself is fuelling the problem by reacting to interest in a developing conspiracy theory, although Live Science has endeavored to bring research and insight into the topic — and a human’s perspective. With that in mind, AI could be the next step along, leading to an internet that feels dead due to a lack of notably original content and articles that lack a human-touch – be that a viewpoint, experience or simply dry wit.

One glimmer of hope here is that Google and other online giants have been taking action to curtail bot use, or so they say. Such measures are in great part due to advertisers becoming more savvy regarding what constitutes real human views versus bot-generated ones. And as someone with a career in online journalism and publishing — I’m acutely aware of Google’s preference for human-made articles that exhibit expertise, authority and trust. Added to that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is using AI to help detect misinformation rather than spread it; there’s an argument that Facebook’s own news algorithms ironically fuel this fire, one example being how the platform was used to incite genocide in Myanmar with algorithms accelerating the spread of unmoderated, harmful anti-Rohingya content, according to Amnesty.

More people are also joining private online communities and websites that seek funding through subscriptions and membership in return for content curated specifically for them — rather than relying on appealing to often inscrutable search engines. Private online platforms such as Discord and WhatsApp also act as communities where data cannot be farmed and engagement-seeking bots have yet to infiltrate.

So, no, the internet is not dead. At least not yet. But we do have to accept that humans share online spaces with a growing proportion of bots and AI agents. As information spreads faster than ever across digital platforms, caution is advised: never assume it's actually a human you’re interacting with on the other side of your screen.