In a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Pangram co-founder and CEO Max Spero discussed the growing trust crisis on the internet driven by AI-generated content.

Spero warned that the internet is ‘dangerously close’ to the dead internet theory becoming reality within a few years, where bots and AI-generated material dominate online spaces, drowning out human contributions.

Pangram, which recently raised $9 million, builds AI detection systems that aim to serve as a trust layer for the web.

The startup has partnered with Substack to help readers identify which newsletters use AI generation. Pangram also released a new AI image detection tool.

Spero highlighted the difficulty of determining how much AI went into a piece of content—distinguishing AI-assisted from AI-generated—and noted that false positives are a serious concern, especially with sensitive imagery.

He argued that while lower-tier writing jobs may disappear, genuinely good human writing could become more valuable as a result.