It’s not exactly an arms race, but if there is competition between humans and AI and the content that each creates, it would appear that they’re neck-and-neck in terms of quantity.
(Now, in terms of quality, there’s simply no comparison. Human-bias aside, you’ve got to hand it to any content-creator who paints subtle intro-imagery around body-boasting terms like “arms” and “necks” to put their story head-and-shoulders above the rest. Thumbs-up emoji, humans!)
In comparing randomly selected English-language articles from between January 2020 and May 2025 (and using Surfer’s AI detection algorithm), Graphite recently found that AI-generated articles have surpassed human-written ones, but “the proportion of AI-generated articles has plateaued since May 2024.”
(Source: Graphite)
“While AI-generated articles grew dramatically after ChatGPT launched, we do not see that trend continuing,” write the Graphite researchers. “Instead, the proportion of AI-generated articles has remained relatively stable over the last 12 months. We hypothesize that this is because practitioners found that AI-generated articles do not perform well in search, as shown in a separate study.”
In sharing the study’s results of the “now roughly equal” numbers, Axios’ Megan Morrone writes, “researchers have long feared that if AI-made content online overwhelms human-created material, large language models could choke on their own exhaust and collapse.”
And while that fear remains, the larger battle about what human-audiences want is much easier to grapple with, as recent surveys have shown growing consumer-comfort in journalists using AI tools for back-end tasks.
When it has to be incorporated into the creative process, keep the human-side front and center.
“Many people incorporate AI into their content creation process,” Graphite’s researchers write. “One strategy is to ask AI to create a first draft, then have a human in the loop to edit or rewrite it. Our study did not evaluate the prevalence of content created using this strategy, and we believe AI-generated human-edited articles may be even more prevalent.”
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