The topic One-third of new websites are now AI-generated — here’s how to spot them is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
It looks like proponents of the Dead Internet Theory may have been onto something — a new study has found that, since 2022, a third of new websites are AI-generated. The study was performed by a team of researchers from the Imperial College of London, the Internet Archive, and Stanford University.
To arrive at its conclusions, the researchers used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to examine a sample of websites published from mid-2022 to mid-2025, with an eye on the launch of the feature-packed ChatGPT in late 2022. What they found is eye-opening, if not entirely surprising: the percentage of AI-generated websites has risen dramatically from zero before ChatGPT’s launch to around 35% by mid-2025. Over 20% of these sites are fully AI-generated.
The study also looked at how these AI-generated sites have impacted the quality of content on the web. This research was based on common criticisms of AI writing — for example, it can feel sanitized, generic, and lacking in unique viewpoints.
AI seemed to be making the internet less diverse, with fewer unique viewpoints and more artificial positivity
Surprisingly, only two of the six hypotheses proved true: #1 and #3. Based on the websites studied, AI seemed to be making the internet less diverse, with fewer unique viewpoints and more artificial positivity. Thankfully, they did not find that factual accuracy is decreasing.
At the end of the study period (mid-2025), the percentage of AI-generated sites was trending up sharply. The obvious takeaway is that, going forward, readers who prefer human-generated content need to be careful of their sources for news and information.
Here are a few ways to ensure you’re getting factual content created by actual people:
Have you encountered an uptick in obvious AI content? Does it affect your reading habits? Let us know in the comments!