Dead Internet Theory

Abstract

This study critically investigates the Dead Internet Theory, emphasizing how it emerged in the context of a changing digital environment.The growing internet seems to have disappeared somewhere between 2016 and 2017. The virtual world appears lifeless due to the growth of automated creatures and AI-generated content. Despite continuing high levels of human creativity and production, the widespread impact of bots raises significant concerns about the basic structure of the internet. Researchers anticipate that the internet will change beyond recognition in the future because to this transformation, which is being driven by apps like GPT-3. This study illuminates the consequences of online interactions by investigating the widespread impact of AI-driven models such as GPTs and the ensuing discussions regarding the dominant position of AI-generated content. We examine the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated material, as evidenced by examples like Imperva’s Bot Circulation Report, Twitter bots, Elon Musk’s Twitter acquiring it, and phony YouTube views. Through the examination of notable cases like the Twitter bot scandal and the widespread trafficking of phony YouTube views, this study adds to a more comprehensive knowledge of the possible consequences of the increasing prevalence of automated entities in the online environment.Our findings predicted that 99.9\% of all media may be AI generated, which raised concerns when ChatGPT became available in 2022. Furthermore, Imperva stated in 2016 that 52\% of all Internet traffic is bots now, indicating bots replacing humans, forecasting a day when content generated by AI will dominate. This outcome give conformity to the idea of dead internet.