More Than a Third of Post-ChatGPT Web Pages Show AI Signs, Pew Finds

OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022 sharply lowered the cost and time required to produce text at scale. The shift has raised concerns about search quality, the reliability of online information and the dilution of original reporting, making the extent of AI authorship an increasingly important issue for publishers, platforms and readers.

Pew Research Center analyzed a sample of nearly 500,000 English-language web pages and found that more than one-third of those published since ChatGPT’s launch showed signs of being written or substantially edited by AI. The findings indicate that generative-AI content has rapidly permeated the public web, though such signals do not conclusively establish authorship for every individual page.