OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted that he’s coming around to the dead internet theory in an early September post on X. His company gave the world ChatGPT—the large language model (LLM) fueling the epidemic of social media bots and AI slop content—which has many commenters fingering him as the guy who did this.
While it may be considered a conspiracy theory, an increasing number of humans are starting to suspect that the internet is dead, or will be soon.
Sam Altman pronounces the internet dead
In an X post on Sept. 3, 2025, Altman confessed that he “never took the dead internet theory that seriously,” but has come to notice that “there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now.”
Dead internet theory posits that the proportion of non-human social media accounts and other online content passed the 50 percent mark back in 2016. Full adherents to this theory believe that this represents an intentional and coordinated attempt to push out human activity and control us all via misinformation and propaganda.
The more casual use of the term might refer to a general shift toward an online bot majority. Whether or not there’s a vast conspiracy to control the population, human traffic has been creeping down to the halfway mark for years. In 2024, Imperva Bad Bot Report measured human traffic at just 50.4 percent, with the rest being bot activity.
AI companies are absolutely fueling this shift, and it’s going to cost human money to combat.
“As more AI-enabled tools are introduced, bots will become omnipresent,” Imperva application security general manager Nanhi Singh told Forbes. “Organizations must invest in bot management and API security tools to manage the threat from malicious, automated traffic.”
In 2022, former CIA cyber-operations officer Dan Woods theorized that over 80 percent of X accounts are bots. That was before Musk took over.
“Facebook is nothing but bots”
Whether believers in dead internet theory or not, many users have beaten Sam Altman to the issue. Any amount of social media use these days will bring you face-to-screen with obvious bots.
Altman stating the obvious about X got people talking about the problem yet again.
“Facebook is nothing but bots and fake ai interaction posts,” said Redditor u/starrpamph. “I can’t believe it’s still as popular as it is. Go on there right now. You won’t see anything from your friends.”
“How many AIO or AITA posts have the phrase ‘my family is divided’ at the end, when it’s super obvious the OP is not being unreasonable?” u/NameLips pointed out. “Very clear engagement bait.”
Back on X, users focused on making fun of Altman for being this late to the game he helped invent.
“I wonder why he calls it an LLM instead of ‘AI’ when he’s reflecting on the downsides,” mused @taste_of_tbone.
“Worldcoin founder says ‘never took the dead internet theory that seriously,’” mocked @onetwoval.
Others not-so-subtly accused him of using ChatGPT to generate his tweet.
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