• An ongoing study by Originality.AI shows how AI content is taking over Google Search results.
• According to the study, 11.3 percent of the Top 20 results on Google Search are AI content.
• With more and more AI content flooding the internet, those who have warned of the Dead Internet Theory may just be right after all.

The large language models that drive the likes of ChatGPT and Google Gemini are incredibly good at using keywords and language that will get a human to click a link, and that’s cause for concern.

This is because content generated by artificial intelligence is starting to rank higher on Google pushing other content further down the slippery pole that is Google Search results. Since 2020, AI detection firm Originality.AI has been tracking the spread of AI content in the Top 20 Google Search Results.

The firm selected 500 keywords and using its AI detector, determined how many results directed users to AI generated content. When this tracking first started just 2.3 percent of results were AI content, at the most recent measurement (22nd April) that figure now sits at 11.3 percent with much of the growth happening this year.

This is despite protections Google put in place with its helpful content policy which was introduced in August 2022.

“If Google continues to lose ground against AI spam flooding search, we’re facing a scenario where those systems get overwhelmed by artificial filler posing as legitimate content,” warns Jon Gillham, AI expert and founder of Originality.AI. “Instead of expanding discovery pools, it will be a rising tide of synthetic noise that buries human artistry.”

Worse than the death of human artistry is the death of the internet as we know it.

You’ve likely encountered the Dead Internet Theory before because we’ve covered it previously. The theory posits that because internet traffic features so many bots and AI platforms learning, eventually it will digest the many hallucinations these systems have and pollute the internet with nonsense.

Given that Originality.AI reckons Google Search is already highlighting AI content, this theory is becoming more and more believable by the day.

And text isn’t the only medium at risk. Video, images and even music can be created by an AI platform in minutes with little to no effort from the user.

“For both fans and artists, the risk is that music discovery becomes distorted and boxed into an echo chamber force-feeding us infinite remixes of the same AI-regurgitated content,” says Gillham. “The industry needs to pay attention because once those machines proliferate across streaming services, it’s a wrap for true music discovery as we know it.”

AI’s place in the world of artists has been marred by controversy and it doesn’t look as if that will end anytime soon, especially as the technology makes it more difficult to tell whether anything is real or not.