AI generated content, which now includes incredibly convincing videos of people, will grow exponentially over the next weeks, months, and years.
At some point, the majority of the content you see will be fake, and any usefulness or connection to humans will be lost.
Even information that you might have previously been able to confirm from a trusted source can (and will) be manipulated in some way, making verification impossible.
This lack of verification, along with the speed at which fake content can now be generated, will make it impossible to defend against.
Even the world of art and communication has been tainted, serving no connection to real people through this digital hellscape.
To that end, when will the internet be so untrustworthy, “soulless”, and useless to you that it crosses the tipping point?
EDIT: Ok, holy fuck. There’s actually a term for what I’m describing: “The Dead Internet Theory”
I don’t want to say never, but probably never. Regardless of AI slop filling social media there will always be places where people congregate that are at least less-impacted by these trends than others. Personally I live in Texas and aside from a few family members everyone else I know lives elsewhere in the country/world and I would have no contact with them whatsoever if not for the internet, so that’s always going to be a draw for me no matter what else is going on. Also I don’t think it’s quite as apocalyptic as you make it out to be; before AI the big concern was ‘zomg the ads will be everywhere’, but then adblock came along and aside from walled-garden mobile apps I virtually never see ads. Dissatisfaction with AI slop will lead to tools meant to find, identify, and combat it, just like it has with everything else. The only danger is if we let companies wall us totally into their little app ecosystems where it’s illegal to modify them to block the stuff you don’t want to see.