More than half of new articles on the internet are written by AI – is human writing at risk of extinction?

The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, especially as it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or an AI.

Now, in what appears to be a turning point, digital marketing company Graphite recently released a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the internet are generated by artificial intelligence.

As a scientist who studies how AI is constructed, how people use it in their everyday lives, and how it impacts culture, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this technology can do and where it falls short.

If you’re more likely to read something online written by AI than by a human, is it only a matter of time before human writing becomes obsolete? Or is this simply another technological development that humans will adapt to?

It’s not all or nothing

As I thought about these questions, I remembered Umberto Eco’s essay “Apocalyptic and Integrated,” originally written in…