# The uneven rise of AI-generated web content

arXiv:2610.36631v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In less than five years, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has dramatically reshaped the public-facing web. Using a sample of more than 5 million crawlable webpages, we demonstrate that the share containing AI-generated text has increased precipitously, but unevenly. Our analyses reveal substantial differences in AI composition across language and domain categories (e.g., .edu, .com, or .gov). A higher fraction of English-language webpages contain AI-generated text compared to pages in other languages, and prevalence is substantially lower on .gov and .edu domains compared to .com. These distinctions persist even after accounting for compositional effects. We also find heterogeneity based on a page's position in the connectivity structure of the web. AI-generated text is most common and has increased most rapidly in pages that are the least central in the graph, which drives much of the overall growth in AI-generated text. A slower increase has taken place for more central pages, with the most central tier emerging as the least likely to contain AI-generated text. Methodologically, we use multiple AI detection tools, and generate estimates using a Bayesian hierarchical model that incorporates corrections for the detectors' statistical properties (both false positives and false negatives) and allows for different detector performance across groups, while propagating uncertainty in detector error rates into prevalence estimates. Our work suggests that AI is a prominent, but varied, contributor to public information and internet-based communication.

## Why It Matters

Using a sample of more than 5 million crawlable webpages, this paper shows that the share of AI-generated text on the public web has risen precipitously but unevenly: prevalence is higher in English and on .com domains than on .gov and .edu, and grows fastest on pages least central in the web's connectivity graph. The uneven rise matters for how quickly AI content saturates different corners of the web. See [Model Collapse](../model-collapse.md), [Public Trust](../public-trust.md), [AI and Society](../ai-society.md), [Culture and Communication](../culture-communication.md), and [The Generative-Agentic Era](../generative-agentic-era.md).

## Sources

- rss: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36631

*Back to [Recent News](../../news.md) · [Sub-article index](../index.md).*