Frequently asked questions

What percentage of the internet is AI-generated?

Across every public platform Dead Internet Monitor samples, 12.5% of content is currently classified AI-generated (30-day rolling average, as of 2026-07-15). Each item is collected from a public platform and labelled AI-generated, human, or uncertain by a large language model; the headline figure is the volume-weighted share labelled AI-generated. See the live number and per-platform breakdown on the dashboard.

What percentage of the internet is "dead"?

Dead Internet Monitor currently measures 5.6% of sampled content as “dead” (30-day rolling, as of 2026-07-15). “Dead” is the bottom-right cell of the Autopsy Matrix: AI-generated content consumed by bots — machines talking to machines. It is the primary headline metric and directly answers “what percentage of the internet is dead?”

What is the Dead Internet Index (DII)?

The Dead Internet Index is a supplementary composite score from 0 to 100 combining four weighted components: AI content (0.40), bot engagement (0.25), the “dead” quadrant (0.20), and low-confidence human classifications (0.15). It currently reads 6.2. It is retained for internal analysis and historical continuity; the primary headline metric is the “dead” quadrant percentage from the Autopsy Matrix, not the DII. Full component weights are on the methodology page.

What is the Autopsy Matrix?

The Autopsy Matrix crosses content origin (human-written vs AI-generated) with audience type (human vs bot), producing four quadrants:

• Alive — human content reaching a human audience. The real internet.
• Zombified — human-written content consumed by bots. Real voices talking to no one.
• Polluted — AI content reaching human eyes. Slop you actually read.
• Dead — AI content consumed by bots. Machines talking to machines.

What is AI slop?

AI slop is AI-generated content — text produced by a language model rather than a person. In the Autopsy Matrix it is the AI Slop content axis; its counterpart, AI Slurp, is the consumption of content by automated accounts rather than humans.

What does "zombified" content mean?

Zombified content is human-written content that is consumed by bots rather than people — real voices talking to no one. It is the top-right quadrant of the Autopsy Matrix: the writing is human in origin but dead on the audience side.

What is the Dead Internet theory?

The Dead Internet theory is the idea that much of the internet's content and activity is now generated and consumed by machines rather than by humans. Dead Internet Monitor does not assert the theory as fact; it measures the underlying quantities — how much content is AI-generated, and how much is consumed by bots — empirically and publishes them daily, so the claim can be checked against data rather than argued from anecdote.

How does Dead Internet Monitor measure this?

Dead Internet Monitor collects content from public platforms (Reddit, Hacker News, YouTube, Stack Overflow, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lobsters, the Guardian, and Steam), classifies each item with a large language model as AI-generated, human, or uncertain, scores each author for bot-like behaviour, and aggregates the results into the Autopsy Matrix and the Dead Internet Index every night. The full pipeline, model versions, and prompts are published on the methodology page.

How often is the data updated?

The data is updated every night. Collection has run for 108 consecutive days, unbroken since 2026-03-30. Each source is sampled on a weekly rotation spread across the week, and the headline figures are recomputed nightly on a 30-day rolling window.

Can I cite or reuse Dead Internet Monitor's data?

Yes. Dead Internet Monitor's aggregate measurements and per-item classifications are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). You can download the daily aggregate and per-item data from the open data API, embed the live figures as a badge, or quote the numbers with attribution. See the licence terms.