Is computational creativity flourishing on the dead internet?

T erence Broad Creative Computing Institute University of the Arts London United Kingdom t.broad@arts.ac.uk Abstract The dead internet theory is a conspiracy theory that states that all interactions and posts on social media are no longer being made by real people, but rather by autonomous bots. While the theory is obviously not true, an increasing amount of posts on social media have been made by bots optimised to gain followers and drive engagement on social media platforms. This paper looks at the recent phenomenon of these bots, analysing their behaviour through the lens of computational creativity to investigate the question: is computational creativity flourishing on the dead internet? Introduction The dead internet theory is a conspiracy theory that emerged in the late 2010's or early 2020's that states that large parts of the internet, in particular on social media are no longer occupied by humans and human generated content, but rather posts by AI-driven bots that are designed to control or influence human behaviour (IlluminatiPirate 2021). Whist the theory emerges from the fringes of the internet, stemming in conspiratorial thinking as a way of explaining broad-based changes to society from nefarious actors, many commentators have observed that there is a grain of truth to the theory (Tiffany 2021).