Artificial intelligence promises quick answers, but it's also draining websites of traffic and revenue. Read how publishers are fighting to survive and whether there's hope for the open web.
Imagine you are in a cemetery where there is a tombstone with the inscription "World Wide Web, 1989–2025". Does that sound like an exaggeration? Maybe not. When The Economist July 2025 published an article titled “AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?”, sparking a wave of debate about whether artificial intelligence is really killing the internet as we know it. Instead of clicking through pages, we now ask chatbots like ChatGPT and get answers without visiting the original sources. This is convenient for us, but a disaster for content creators. With a bit of irony: will the web survive, or will it become a museum piece full of ads and bots?
How artificial intelligence is changing search and browsing
Artificial intelligence has revolutionized the way we search for information. Instead of classic search engines like Google, we now use AI summaries that offer us quick answers at the top of the page. According to data Pew Research Center as of July 2025 userswho see the AI summary clicked on links only in 8 percent of cases, compared to 15 percent without a summary. What’s more, in 26 percent of cases, users simply stopped browsing after seeing the summary – 10 percent more than without it.
In May 2025, Google introduced AI Mode, which creates mini-articles from multiple sources without the user having to visit websites. It’s convenient, but ironic: the search engine that built an empire on driving traffic is now stealing that traffic. Forbes estimates that AI summaries can cause organic traffic to drop by 15 to 64 percent, depending on the industry. Publishers like the Financial Times report a 25 to 30 percent drop in search traffic, while DMG Media sees up to an 89 percent drop in clicks due to AI summaries.
On social media platforms like X, users are lamenting that the internet has become “a network of bots talking to bots.” One tweet says, “AI is destroying the internet. Instagram is full of AI-generated garbage, and half the people on Twitter are bots.” Another adds, “Search engines and social networks have taken over the internet and killed it.” This isn’t just complaining—it’s a real crisis of originality.
Economic blow: from ads to collapse
The web economy is based on traffic: more clicks means more ads and revenue. AI is upending that balance. As NPR reported in July 2025, sites like CNN lost about 30 percent of their traffic, while Business Insider and HuffPost saw their traffic drop by as much as 40 percent. Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, described the panic among media executives in The Economist: “I thought it was North Korea, and they said, ‘No, it’s AI.’”
Bloggers and smaller publishers are the hardest hit. Travel blog Dangerous Business reports a drop in traffic due to Google’s changes and AI, threatening their survival. The irony? AI is learning from these sites, but also draining them. As Klaudia Jaźwińska of Columbia University says: “It’s a Faustian bargain for publishers.”
Risks: Hallucinations, Bias, and the Dead Internet
AI is not perfect. Apple and Google have had to correct mistakes, such as the fake news that Rafael Nadal had come out as gay, or cases where AI chatbots encouraged suicide. The BBC warns about “bubbles” and repetition of expected information, which can lead to less diversity.
The “dead internet theory” is spreading on X: “ChatGPT and AI agents have destroyed originality. All interactions are full of generated garbage.” People are returning to real interactions while the web is becoming full of automated content.
Is there a solution? Adaptation, lawsuits and new models
Publishers are not giving up. Some, like The New York Times, are suing AI companies for copyright infringement, while others are entering into licensing agreements—for example, News Corp. and Axel Springer with Meta. The Guardian and the Financial Times are developing their own AI tools that use only their content.
Cloudflare proposes “pay-to-index,” where AI bots pay to access content. The BBC blocks AI crawlers, but it’s not always successful. Many focus on subscriptions, podcasts, and news to build direct relationships with readers. As Helen Havlak of The Verge says, “We’re doubling down on subscriptions and making the web more like a social network.”
Google claims that AI is sending “higher quality traffic” and that the web is growing—content has increased by 45 percent in the past two years. But critics have doubts: will it be enough to solve the open web?
Conclusion: is the internet dead?
Artificial intelligence is like a double-edged sword: it makes life easier, but it also destroys the foundations of the web. Publishers are fighting back with innovation, lawsuits, and new models, But the future is uncertain. We may return to real books, or the web may become a “machine web” full of robots. In any case, it’s time to think: do we want quick answers or a rich, diverse internet?
