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ZDNET's key takeaways
Over half of published articles are AI-generated.
However, the percentage of AI-generated articles is plateauing.
AI-generated articles don't perform well in search.
You aren't imagining it: There is more AI slop on the internet. In fact, half of the articles you're coming across are AI-generated according to SEO firm Graphite, which found that over half of the written content on the internet is produced by AI.
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Human writers seemed to be losing the battle against AI, with AI-generated articles slightly overtaking human-written articles between November 2024 and March 2025, according to raw data. In January 2025, that data found AI-generated articles peaked at 55%.
However, the proportion of AI-generated articles has remained "relatively stable," according to Graphite. The researchers don't see the disproportionate flood of AI-generated articles continuing.
"We hypothesize that this is because practitioners found that AI-generated articles do not perform well in search, as shown in a separate study," Graphite said in its post.
Perhaps the AI Google and other search engines are using is trained to spot and avoid AI-generated articles. How ironic.
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The share of articles on the internet written by AI has rapidly grown since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022. A year after its release, AI-generated articles accounted for 39% of published articles on the internet, according to Graphite. Despite their ubiquity, Graphite writes that these AI-generated articles aren't appearing in Google and ChatGPT.
However, AI's rapid improvement may make it more difficult to detect whether content is AI-generated, even as AI content detectors improve at a similar rate.
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Earlier this month, Pew Research Center found that only 2% of Americans regularly get news from AI, while most Americans, 75%, say they never get news from AI. Those who are getting their news from AI reported not fully trusting the information they see.
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As AI tools and use cases bleed into every industry and aspect of daily life, avoiding them becomes harder. The report only emphasizes the long-running question -- and, at times, problem -- of AI's viability as an information tool.