• Supervisor: Christopher Diebel (diebel@ise.tu-…)
• Start: At any time
• Language: You can write your thesis in English or German
• Methods: Two different methodological approaches are available for this thesis: a technical approach, which involves systematic crawling and analysis of data from Internet sources, or a quantitative approach, which consists of the design and implementation of a survey, as well as the statistical analysis of the survey results.

According to the dead internet theory, a significant portion of content on the internet is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) rather than real human users. Furthermore, dead internet theory states that algorithms and automated processes increasingly manipulate content visibility, user engagement, and trends, leading to a homogenized, inauthentic digital ecosystem. Thus, the internet is becoming a sterile, controlled environment dominated by some institutions. The origin of the dead internet theory is grounded in a post on the Agoraroad forum in 2021, in which a user describes this development and that the internet died already in 2016. While the dead internet theory received little attention, the rise of generative AI and its adoption in several industries and services led to the assumption that the dead internet theory might become true.

Enabled by recent enhancements in AI, in particular in large language models, AI is able to generate new content such as text, videos, images, or voice, which is often indistinguishable from that of human experts. Those advanced capabilities in AI have changed the internet in multiple ways. While Stack Overflow was known as the contact point for developers if they had some programming questions, developers increasingly use AI to solve their problems instead. Furthermore, illustrations are increasingly generated by AI instead of designers, and AI is integrated into search engines to answer human questions.

This topic aims to investigate the state of the dead internet and its consequences on human interactions. If you are interested in writing your thesis on this topic, please contact me via email for further information. Please include your CV and transcript of records with your request.