By Kate Knibbs
Publication Date: 2026-04-15 11:00:00
It’s obvious to anyone with a pulse and a smartphone that the internet has an AI problem. Since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, the problem has become even more severe as some social platforms are flooded with AI-generated writing. Now there is data to back up the anecdotal evidence.
A new preprint study released today by researchers at Imperial College of London, Stanford University and the Internet Archive found that about 35 percent of all new websites are either AI-generated or AI-powered. The same study also found that online writing is becoming “increasingly sanitized and artificially cheerful.” In other words: AI makes the Internet forgery-proof.
The research team tried four different approaches to AI detection before settling on Pangram Labs tools after they produced the most consistent results. (Although the team noted that it performed well in its testing, it’s worth noting that all artificial intelligence detection tools are imperfect.) To create a representative overview…
