Humans Strike Back: Human Writing Regains Ground as AI Content Plateaus

Human content stages a comeback

A fresh analysis from Graphite, cited by Axios, examined more than 65,000 URLs and found that AI-generated writing briefly outpaced human authors online, but the trend has evened out. Human-written content now sits at roughly 50% of the web, signaling a slowdown in the rapid expansion of machine-made prose.

Why search engines and chatbots favor people

Graphite’s research suggests search engines have become better at detecting low-quality, formulaic text. The study found that about 86% of top-ranking Google pages are human-authored. Even chatbots and answer engines, including ChatGPT and Perplexity, cite human sources the majority of the time, referencing humans in more than 80% of cases.

This indicates that authenticity matters not only to readers but also to the algorithms and AI systems that surface content.

Marketers pivot to being quotable by AI

The rise and partial retreat of AI-written articles is shifting marketing strategies. A growing movement toward Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, focuses on producing content designed to be cited by AI tools and chatbots rather than just optimized for classic search rankings. A Demand Gen Report cited in coverage shows that around 35% of brands now prioritize GEO over traditional SEO.

That change reflects the broader scramble in marketing to adapt to AI-driven discovery and to create content that both humans and machines will deem valuable.

The blurred line between human and machine authorship

The situation is not black and white. Google itself frames the trend as a symbiosis between humans and AI rather than a strict divide. Predictions like Europol’s 2022 estimate that 90% of online content would soon be AI-made now look exaggerated in light of recent data.

At the same time, ethical and legal questions are coming to the fore. Ongoing debates consider whether machine-generated works can hold copyright and how to define authorship when AI is involved. If machines cannot be legal authors, publishers might shift back to human creators or simply hide AI involvement more carefully.

What this means for publishers and readers

The novelty of automated prose appears to be fading. Readers, search engines, and even AI tools seem to prefer something humans still reliably deliver: unpredictability, nuance, and small imperfections that signal a human voice. For publishers, the message is to either invest in genuinely human storytelling or to rethink how AI is used and disclosed so that content remains discoverable and trusted.