"In 2026, AI-written content will outpace what humans produce - not just in spammy corners of the web, but across the mainstream channels where people search, scroll, and learn. This isn't a story about technological capability. We already know machines can generate limitless words. It's a story about volume, value, and what journalism becomes when "content" grows functionally infinite. Publishers have spent years worrying about shrinking attention spans."
"In 2026, the bigger problem will be attention spread thin across an overwhelming surplus of AI-generated media. AI may guzzle water, electricity, and money at industrial scale, yet it still costs users virtually nothing to produce endless content; companies are subsidizing that output to build habits and lock in dominance before the bills come due. As those incentives play out, our feeds are already being reshaped - human work increasingly receding as a tide of machine-generated content rises."
By 2026, AI-generated content will outnumber human-produced material across mainstream search and social channels, shifting attention and value. Massive subsidized production makes endless content effectively free to consumers while firms chase habit formation and market dominance. Algorithmic systems tuned for attention will favor fast, sticky, or politically convenient outputs over careful, tested, or experience-grounded reporting. Training AI on its own outputs will amplify distortions and increase the internet's synthetic character. Publishers, independent creators, and expertise-bearing work risk loss of visibility and value as traffic and incentives realign around volume rather than rigorous reporting.
Read at Nieman Lab
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