It's no surprise that the rise of artificial intelligence is sparking debates among experts. Moreover, whether you use ChatGPT or Google Gemini, generative AI is increasingly being integrated into our daily lives. It's only fair to ask: Could AI take over the internet? Some members of the online community reckon it already has. This old online theory is on the rise again, and it all has to do with Shrimp Jesus. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's the infamous AI-generated Facebook image that, along with variations, has been floating around the net since the image first surfaced in March of 2024. At first glance, Shrimp Jesus appeared to be your standard, human-made meme. But it was actually the jumping-off point for Facebook AI art slop -- a proliferation of AI-generated memes like the Challah Horse, the 386-year-old granny baking her own birthday cake, and the random wooden cars (to name just a few).
The flood of these pictures has reignited discussions about a conspiracy theory that cropped up in 2021, called the Dead Internet Theory. If you frequently use TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, you may've already seen examples of these kinds of images, without knowing it. I write about the internet for a living, and I only recently heard about the theory. Researching it led me down a rabbit hole I struggled to emerge from. So, what is the Dead Internet Theory? And how does it parallel the rise of artificial intelligence?
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The origins of the Dead Internet Theory
The Dead Internet Theory first emerged in 2021 on the online forums, 4chan and Wizardchan. People took to these forums claiming that the internet died in 2016 and that AI bots mostly run the content we now see online. This theory also supports the possibility that AI is being used to manipulate the public due to a much larger and sinister agenda. These posts were pieced together in a lengthy thread and published on another online forum called Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe. Be aware, the thread can be easily accessed online, but I did not link to it due to the obscene language in the post.
User IlluminatiPirate wrote, "The internet feels empty and devoid of people. It is also devoid of content."
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Now, years later, this conspiracy is seeing the light of day again with a rise of TikTok creators dissecting the theory and finding examples to support it. One creator, with a username of SideMoneyTom, posted a video in March 2024, showing examples of different Facebook accounts posting variations of AI-generated images of Jesus. These images provide little traffic online, yet they can still easily proliferate your feed. Like many other online creators, SideMoneyTom echoed the same sentiment: These Facebook accounts are run by AI bots and create all content. To better understand this theory, it helps to know how generative AI works.
Generative AI uses artificial intelligence systems that produce new content in the form of stories, images, videos, music and even software code. According to Monetate, "Generative AI uses machine-learning algorithms and training data to generate new, plausibly human-passing content." With the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, chatbots have become all the rage these days, with tech giants like Google, Apple and MetaAI creating a slew of AI tools for their products.
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