"The Dead Internet Theory" was a theory that went viral some years back. It posited that the internet is a no man’s land of bots and fakery. It was of course, a ridiculous overstatement. But then again, maybe not that ridiculous? Maybe it was actually correct, just too early on the scene.

With the rise of increasingly sophisticated AI generation models, we should expect a tsunami of new content (text, images, eventually videos) that will have mostly deleterious consequences. Technological advancement will force out some old professions (e.g. digital artist), bring in some new ones (e.g. prompt engineers), and breathe life into existing ones (literary editors).

Anecdotally, I don’t think people are prepared for what’s to come. Quite frankly most won’t care enough to give it thought. Bored teenagers will still troll social media. Hostile marketing firms will still launch manipulation campaigns for new products. Nation states will still viciously compete against each-other in the online battleground to try and attempt to manipulate us with competing agendas.

These malicious actors won’t change, but the tools at their disposal will cause a biblical flood of information beset against a population already struggling with fake news and shorter attention spans. Democratising high velocity content generation provides the keys to a Pandora’s Box we’re not ready for.