Is AI Killing the Internet? New Signs Indie Curators Fear It’s Already Too Late

AI-generated content is swamping online spaces, edging out authentic voices, and industry insiders are sounding the alarm.

The Guardian recently argued that “low‑quality ‘slop’ generated by AI is crowding out genuine humans across the internet” and pointed out that even Meta’s platforms “are positively sloshing with weird AI‑generated images,” including the infamous “Shrimp Jesus” content that routinely draws automated crowds.

AI-generated noise isn’t confined to social media. Bloomberg headlined its analysis, “The assertion that bots are choking off human life online has never seemed more true”.

And on Reddit, users on r/Futurology warn that half of what they see, be it image searches, videos, or comments, “are written by bots,” with one user noting:

“Half of the pictures I see on photography groups are ai generated… Internet nowadays consist of constantly having to ask yourself if what you see/hear is human made or not.”

Research supports these impressions. The “dead internet theory” suggests nearly half of web traffic stems from bots; this percentage reportedly edged above 49% in 2023, much of it driven by AI scraping its own outputs.

Meanwhile, Forbes warned that generative AI fed on its own content leads to degraded responses.

The Atlantic, in November, noted AI search is “remaking the humble search engine,” potentially sacrificing discovery and curiosity for polished answers.

Major platforms are already adapting. Google and publishers are taking hits as users increasingly rely on AI over blue‑link clickthroughs.

• Recent reports show websites like Business Insider, the Washington Post, and HuffPost have suffered over 50% drops in referral traffic since AI search launched .

Google’s “AI Mode” feature is blamed for shrinking clicks and disrupting ad-driven models.

Last week, the Economist Times flagged a worrying pattern: AI models are “cannibalizing their own creations,” generating a “sea of synthetic sludge” that erodes meaningful sources by including their work in model training.

There’s no official rebuttal from Google, Meta, or OpenAI.

But some experts propose tighter curation, vetting of AI content, or even tiered internets, separating human-authored content from AI-generated noise.

What happens next depends on incentives.

AI offers instant scale, but if platforms can’t filter quality from clutter, the user experience could degrade until authenticity becomes a premium again.

And if trust is your currency online, something valuable is already vanishing.