People are concerned the 'dead internet theory' is finally coming true
A string of AI-generated characters have been gaining massive followings on social media, leading some people to worry that the 'Dead Internet Theory' is becoming a reality.
The Dead Internet Theory is the idea that most internet traffic on social media and other parts of the internet is not actually real people exchanging information.
Instead, the majority of traffic is made up of bots or even AI accounts which are generating messages and traffic off the back of each other.
When the majority of the internet is made up of bots and AI, then it becomes 'dead' because human users interact mainly interact with generated content served to them by algorithms.
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It's potentially a big problem because one of the biggest parts of how parts of the internet, in particular social media, has been driven is by selling advertising, and when you can no longer be assured that the accounts you're reaching out to and being viewed by are even real people, that's an issue.
The Dead Internet Theory is not a new thing, with bots exchanging messages and posts on social media platforms for several years.
However, the rise of generative AI has brought about a whole new level in being able to quickly put together an account without a human ever even directly featuring, or even filming, the videos.
One particularly large AI-generated account is that of 'Jean Philanthrope', with a surname that ironically means 'to love humans', which has racked up around 238,000 followers on Instagram.
The videos posted to the account show the AI-generated character with bleached blonde hair in a bob cut, a twirly moustache, and dressed in a tweed suit.
He is usually standing in an unusual location, with the Eiffel Tower generated in the background or in a generated depiction of a museum or restaurant, before doing the same routine of shadow boxing.
There's even a 'rival' account which has sprung up called 'Archibald Brown', with the account posting similar AI-generated videos of another character who is coded as English, and also does shadowboxing routines in AI-generated locations.
One person even claimed that 'influencers are dead', saying that you can use AI to generate a 'character sheet', which you then feed into a video generator which churns out videos for the account.
Taking to X, user @simonecanciello wrote: "dead internet theory is real. you can actually create an AI character and get 200k followers in 1 week."
The accounts seem to be proving successful, being pushed by algorithms and growing quickly online as people interact with them, though many on the account of 'Jean Phil' are engaging by commenting that it is AI-generated content, though others either seemingly don't realise it's AI, or say they don't care.
Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seems to have admitted that more AI-generated content is spreading on social media, posting to X in 2025: "i never took the dead internet theory that seriously but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now".
Topics: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, News
Kit Roberts