{
  "id": 5047083,
  "title": "Creeping AI: One in three new web pages weren't generated by a human",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/02/creeping-ai-one-in-three-new-web-pages-werent-generated-by-a-human",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-02T08:08:34.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The National UAE",
    "slug": "the-national-uae",
    "url": "https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/2026/09/02/one-in-three-new-web-pages-shows-signs-of-ai-generation/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Recent research from the Pew Research Center in the United States reveals that more than one in three web pages published after November 2022, the release of ChatGPT, show evidence of AI generation or editing. This figure stands at 35 per cent, a significant rise from 9.6 per cent for pages created before ChatGPT. Before the AI tool's release, such signs were virtually non-existent, at around 1 per cent.\n\nThe trend of AI involvement in content generation accelerated after ChatGPT's launch, with generative AI tools like Claude, Gemini, and others becoming part of everyday content production. However, the study also indicates that different online domains exhibit varying levels of AI usage. For instance, 9.3 per cent of .com web pages showed significant signs of AI-generated content by 2026, roughly twice the rate of .org pages (4.6 per cent), and much lower for .edu and .gov domains, both at around 1 per cent.\n\nAnother study by Graphite Growth found that AI has now been responsible for writing as many online articles as humans for the first time. The Pew researchers also discovered shifts in language patterns created by generative AI, including a roughly doubling of em dashes' use and a 63 per cent increase in the use of Oxford commas. Words and phrases such as \"align with\", \"delve\", \"interplay\", \"showcase\", and \"testament\" - identified as AI-typical - have more than doubled. Similarly, writing structures like negative parallelism have nearly tripled.\n\nWhile these patterns don't definitively prove AI involvement, they provide a probability-based indication. However, the study also highlights the imperfections of AI detection tools, which sometimes incorrectly classify human-written content as AI-generated or vice versa. It also raises questions about the potential influence of AI on human writing, suggesting it could start shaping the way humans write in the future.",
  "summary": "You've probably read something online recently and wondered: was this written by AI? There's a good chance it was. New research from the Pew Research Centre, in the US, examined hundreds of thousands of web pages to measure how often they showed signs of AI generation or editing. Our chart of the week shows that web pages published after ChatGPT was released in November 2022 exhibit significant…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The National Business",
        "title": "Creeping AI: One in three new web pages weren't generated by a human",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/02/creeping-ai-one-in-three-new-web-pages-werent-generated-by-a-human-5052130",
        "published": "2026-09-02T08:08:34.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}