We analyzed 900,000 newly created net pages in April 2025 and located that 74.2% of them contained AI-generated content material.
At Ahrefs, our machine studying staff has constructed an AI content material detector (codenamed bot_or_not). We’re about to launch the AI content material detector for Ahrefs clients to make use of, so we determined to place it by way of its paces with a query we’ve been dying to reply:
What share of latest content material is AI-generated?
We’re about to launch our AI content material detector as a part of the Web page Examine device in Web site Explorer.
We used bot_or_not to research 900,000 English-language net pages that had been newly detected by our net crawler in April 2025. We analyzed one web page per area (so we examined content material from 900,000 totally different domains). Every web page was categorized in response to the proportion of the web page our mannequin detected as being AI-generated.
Right here’s what our content material detector discovered:
- 2.5% of pages had been categorized as “pure AI.”
- 25.8% had been categorized as “pure human.”
- 71.7% had been categorized as a mixture of the two.
Of people who contained a mixture of AI and human content material:
- 25.86% confirmed reasonable AI use (11%–40% of the web page content material was categorized as AI)
- 20.50% confirmed substantial AI use (41%–70%)
- 15.51% confirmed dominant AI use (71%–99%)
I used to be shocked that just about three-quarters of the pages we analyzed included AI content material. However the longer I sat with the information, the extra it made sense.
Free, quick AI content material era is offered natively in Google Docs, in Gmail, in LinkedIn. AI can summarize Slack messages, conduct article analysis, shorten transcripts. It’s actively tough to keep away from the large, shiny “generate” button, and can solely turn into tougher as generative AI turns into additional embedded in purposes.
An instance of generative AI accessible natively in Google Docs.
And, as extra AI-generated content material is created, the brand new content material that references that AI-generated content material will, in flip, embody AI-generated materials. The presence of AI content material will unfold at an ever sooner charge, tainting all the pieces it touches to a larger or lesser extent.
If extra validation was wanted, after I surveyed 879 content material entrepreneurs, 87% reported utilizing AI to create or assist create content material. Simply 13% reported that they didn’t use AI in any capability.
And, unsurprisingly, weblog posts had been the most typical content material kind created by AI: 
LLMs are too handy and too low-cost to be ignored. Utilizing generative AI in content material creation is rapidly changing into the default.
No AI content material detector is ideal. Totally different detection strategies have totally different strengths and weaknesses, however all AI detection instruments share comparable struggles: they’re typically skilled on slim datasets, they wrestle with partial detection, and they’re weak to humanising instruments.
Our staff understands these limitations and constructed our device with these issues in thoughts. We’ve had nice outcomes from testing our content material detector on Ahrefs content material, however—like each different market-leading content material detector—it’s going to by no means be 100% correct.
However no search engine optimization metric is 100% correct. All of us use search quantity information to form our technique, however as we’ve written earlier than, there may be no such factor as “correct” search quantity. In the identical manner, AI content material detection will be extraordinarily useful with out being excellent.
You possibly can see how a lot AI content material your opponents publish, which fashions they use, and the way that modifications over time.
You possibly can estimate how a lot AI content material is current in a specific SERP, and work out if you must make investments extra effort to rank.
You possibly can even perceive how natural efficiency metrics, like search site visitors, key phrase rankings, and backlinks, correlate with totally different ranges of AI use (as I kind, we’re working a examine on this).
These instruments shouldn’t be utilized in isolation to make life-or-death choices about somebody’s profession—however they’re a superb supply of knowledge for high-performing entrepreneurs within the period of AI content material.
Begin utilizing our new AI content material detector
Our AI detection device is about to launch as a part of Web site Explorer. You’ll additionally be capable to strive our mannequin totally free as a part of our revamped free AI content material detector.
