The internet was once hailed as a modern printing press—a boundless arena for knowledge, culture, connection, and discovery.
Today, it risks drowning in its own vomit.
Filmmaker Mario Sixtus’s DW Documentary “Will AI lead to the death of the internet?” paints a stark, often surreal portrait of this transformation.
Generative AI is not merely augmenting content creation; it is industrializing the production of low-effort, low-value, often deceptive material at scales humans can barely comprehend.
The result is what insiders call “slop”: AI-generated images of Shrimp Jesus, fabricated celebrity death rumors, hallucinated self-help books that recommend eating toxic mushrooms, and endless streams of pseudo-news designed to enrage or titillate.
The Mechanics of the Deluge
The documentary traces the incentives with surgical precision. Platforms like Facebook reward engagement with small payouts, subsidizing creators in places like Kenya who churn out viral AI images around religion, animals, and soccer. One operator candidly explains targeting high-engagement topics; the algorithm does the rest.
On YouTube, automated channels pump out clickbait about celebrities in peril—Michael Schumacher “dead again,” or lurid family violence tales—with AI voices and visuals. A single prompt can generate an entire video complete with invented backstories, talking heads, and dramatic narration.
Mats Schönauer’s experiment is particularly telling: using off-the-shelf tools, he created a fake sports news channel.
One prompt about a fictional “blue card” in soccer (forcing players to remove cleats and play barefoot) produced a polished, glitchy-but-convincing video filled with invented fan reactions and analysis. The ease is breathtaking—and terrifying. AI doesn’t just copy; it fabricates with abandon because it lacks any grounding in truth. Its “superpower” is confident hallucination.
This extends to books. Amazon is awash in AI-generated titles on foraging, relationships, and success that mimic real works, sometimes plagiarizing structure while inventing dangerous advice. One expert notes that scaling this requires almost no human effort—pseudonyms can flood the market with thousands of volumes. Traditional authors watch their ideas repackaged under fake names with AI-generated author photos from sites like “This Person Does Not Exist.”
Search engines, once gateways to human insight, now surface this detritus first. The web’s signal is being swamped by noise, making genuine research harder and eroding trust.
Economic and Human Underpinnings
The documentary humanizes the supply side. Underpaid click workers train models, while dubious coaches sell “passive income” dreams through AI automation.
A New York podcaster clones himself with AI for content. On the demand side, platforms profit from attention, even (or especially) when it’s inflamed or addicted. Cory Doctorow and others highlight how this fits a broader pattern of enshittification: platforms prioritize growth and monetization over user value, accelerating decay.
Philosopher-poet Nick Cave is quoted powerfully: data doesn’t suffer, AI has no inner being, no lived experience. It can remix but not truly create from the depths of human struggle and joy. Yet the flood continues because economics favor volume over veracity.
Building On the Warning: A Thought-Provoking Reckoning
The video raises an existential question for the digital age: if the internet becomes primarily machine-generated slop talking to algorithms optimized for engagement, what remains for us? This isn’t just inconvenience; it’s a threat to epistemology—how societies know what is true.
When fake political videos push narratives (e.g., anti-Muslim Easter Bunny conspiracies or partisan slop), they shape elections and social cohesion. When medical or safety misinformation proliferates unchecked, lives are at stake.
We risk a “Dead Internet” not as conspiracy but reality: a place where authentic human voices are algorithmically buried, and most “content” is synthetic filler. Search becomes less reliable, social feeds more alienating, and creativity itself devalued. Why labor over a thoughtful essay when a prompt yields something “good enough” that racks up views?
Yet despair is premature. This moment echoes past information revolutions. The printing press spread both wisdom and nonsense; societies adapted with literacy, criticism, and institutions. We can do the same.
Possible paths forward demand intentionality:
- Technological antibodies: Better detection of AI content (watermarks, provenance standards), user-controlled filters, and AI tools trained to prioritize human, verified sources. Search engines could default to “human-authored” modes or reward originality.
- Platform accountability: Regulations targeting engagement farming, clearer labeling of synthetic media, and incentives that value depth over virality. Break the subsidy loop where platforms profit from slop while users suffer.
- Cultural shift: Cultivate discernment—digital literacy that teaches skepticism toward polished but sourceless content. Support creators who build communities around authenticity (newsletters, independent sites, slow media). Value lived experience and rigorous thought over seamless generation.
- Decentralization and niches: The open web’s strength was diversity. Small, moderated forums, personal blogs, and blockchain-like provenance systems could carve out human spaces amid the flood. AI could even help curate the best of humanity if directed wisely.
- Philosophical reset: What is the internet for? Entertainment and connection, or endless optimization for profit? Reclaiming it requires remembering that meaning emerges from suffering, joy, context, and relationship—things AI simulates but does not possess.
The egg of the internet has cracked, spilling both potential and waste. AI is a powerful tool, but without wisdom in its deployment and governance, it risks turning our greatest information commons into a hall of mirrors filled with Shrimp Jesuses and barefoot soccer players. The documentary doesn’t offer easy optimism, but it urges us to look clearly: the web’s death is not inevitable. It is a choice—a collective one about what we amplify, what we reward, and what we refuse to accept as “good enough.”
In the end, the internet will reflect us. If we demand more than slop, we must build and support systems that make truth, beauty, and humanity the profitable, visible, and default options once again. The alternative is drifting forever in digital trash, wondering what we lost while we scrolled.
