Research suggests that generative tools are no longer merely helping people navigate the internet—they are increasingly shaping the information published across it.
WASHINGTON, D.C.— More than one-third of English-language webpages published since ChatGPT’s launch show meaningful signs of artificial intelligence authorship or editing, according to a Pew Research Center study. Researchers examined approximately 490,000 pages collected through the Common Crawl archive between January 2021 and July 2026. The findings reveal a sharp increase beginning in late 2022, when generative AI became widely accessible.
Around 35% of pages published after ChatGPT’s arrival contained linguistic patterns associated with substantial AI intervention. However, this does not mean that every page was written entirely by a machine, since artificial intelligence may have been used to edit, expand or restructure human-created material. Across a random sample of 10,000 webpages available in July 2026, the overall proportion showing significant AI signals was approximately 10%, reflecting the continued presence of older content.
Commercial websites displayed the strongest concentration of suspected AI-assisted text. Roughly one in ten pages using a .com domain showed such signals, compared with 4.6% of .org pages and about 1% of those using .edu or .gov domains. Researchers also observed increased use of long dashes, Oxford commas, negative parallel constructions and words frequently associated with generative models.
The analysis relied on Open Pangram, a detection system designed to identify probable mixtures of human and artificial authorship. Pew cautioned that writing patterns alone cannot prove AI involvement because people may naturally use the same vocabulary and structures. As machines produce a growing share of what humans read, the defining challenge of the digital era will be determining not only whether information is accurate, but also who—or what—shaped it.
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