AI-Generated Writing Was Taking Over the Internet. But Then Something Unexpected Happened

"Of the number of articles published on the internet, the percentage of those written predominantly by AI now equals that of human-written content, according to new data from Graphite. The digital marketing agency used three different AI detectors to examine more than 55,000 randomly selected URLs to determine AI-generated content. The articles had to meet certain requirements like containing 100 or more words, and having a publish date between January 2020 and March 2026."

"Within the first 12 months after ChatGPT's launch in 2022, the number of AI generated articles on the internet surged to 36 percent, then to 48 percent in the second year. But since about January 2025, that percentage of AI generated content has held steady around 50 percent."

"Graphite also flagged a separate study from October 2025 that perhaps offers some context for the plateau. AI-generated content vastly underperforms human-written articles when it comes to search and discovery-meaning it might not be generating as much value as content created by an actual writer. According to the analysis, 86 percent of articles appearing in Google Search and 82 percent of those that appear on ChatGPT and Perplexity were written by people. Even when AI-generated content does appear, Graphite noted, it tends to rank lower."

""These models are smart because of all the information we put on the web that was created without these models," UC Berkeley's Dan Klein told Axios. "If we stop creating knowledge that is independent of these models, what's going to fuel that?""

AI-generated content increased sharply after ChatGPT’s launch, reaching 36% within the first 12 months and 48% in the second year. Since around January 2025, the share of predominantly AI-written articles has remained steady near 50%. The findings come from an analysis of more than 55,000 randomly selected URLs using three AI detectors, with articles filtered to at least 100 words and published between January 2020 and March 2026. A related study indicates AI-written content underperforms for search and discovery, with most Google Search, ChatGPT, and Perplexity results attributed to human writing. AI-generated pieces that do appear tend to rank lower, raising concerns about quality if models train on AI-produced text.

Read at Inc