Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman have warned on social media in recent weeks about the “Dead Internet Theory,” an idea that the Internet is dominated by bot activity rather than humans, but experts who once dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory warn that it may actually be legitimate amid the rise of artificial intelligence.
Key data
“Is this the time to remind you, once again, of the dead internet theory?” Ohanian said Sunday in a post on
Ohanian has been increasingly open to the Dead Internet Theory in recent months, warning in a post on X in June that “it’s not a question of whether most of what we see online will be generated by AI. It already is.”
Ohanian said on a Wall Street Journal panel in June that he has “been a long-time supporter of the dead Internet theory,” acknowledging that it was considered a conspiracy theory a decade ago but is now “a very real thing” due to the proliferation of bots on social media, as well as humans using AI to create and amplify content.
Altman also warned about the dead internet theory, writing in a post on
large number
51%. That’s the percentage of internet traffic generated by bots, compared to humans, in 2024, according to cybersecurity company Imperva. This figure represents the first time in a decade that bot activity surpassed that of humans, which the company attributed to the rise of AI and Large Language Models (LLM), which have simplified the creation and scaling of bots for malicious purposes.
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What do experts say about the dead Internet theory?
Before the proliferation of large language models, the Dead Internet Theory was dismissed by some as unconvincing, although some experts in recent years have argued that the theory is more plausible amid the rise of AI. In 2021, Caroline Busta, founder of New Models, a German company that studies the impact of technology on culture, told The Atlantic — in an article titled “The ‘Dead Internet Theory’ is wrong, but it seems true” — that some elements of the Dead Internet Theory are “paranoid fantasy,” although she agreed with the “general idea” that the internet feels more “empty” than it did a decade ago.
A team of researchers from Swiss universities published a paper last year examining the Dead Internet Theory, stating that it “used to be quite speculative” 10 years ago, but “with the rise of generative AI, it can now be observed firsthand.” Researchers said internet users now have a harder time differentiating between human-created and AI-generated content, citing the rise of deepfake videos.
The researchers added that social media has become “less about connecting people with other people and more about consuming content and getting hooked on doses of dopamine deliberately targeted to our brains,” also citing generative AI used by retail companies to sell products. Jake Renzella, a computer science professor at the University of New South Wales, and Vlada Rozova, a machine learning researcher at the University of Melbourne, published a paper describing a “vicious cycle of artificial interaction,” noting that AI bots can create artificially generated images that are boosted and reposted by other AI-powered accounts, a cycle that “no longer involves humans at all.”
They cited bizarre viral posts like “Shrimp Jesus,” an AI-generated image that went viral on Facebook in 2024. The Guardian’s technology editor Alex Hern also blamed Elon Musk’s to a great language model and make it go out of control by responding to viral content.”
Surprising fact
A team of researchers from the University of Zurich deployed AI-generated bots to a popular subreddit, r/changemyview, to study whether they could get people to change their minds about controversial topics. However, Reddit responded by threatening legal action. The researchers’ work was never published.
Key background
The “dead internet theory” had gone viral on forums like Reddit and other websites in the late 2010s and early 2020s. An online forum post by user IlluminatiPirate, viewed more than 362,000 times and cited by The Atlantic, laid out an elaborate theory about the death of the internet. The user claimed that the internet is “empty and devoid of people” and that most of the “content supposedly produced by humans” is generated by AI. The Atlantic also reported that the dead internet theory attracted attention in other online forums, including popular podcaster Joe Rogan’s subreddit, subreddits on paranormal activity, and a forum for fans of Linus Tech Tips, a popular tech-focused YouTube channel.
This article was originally published by Forbes US
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