First They Stole My Car. Then AI Stole My Work

I stepped out of the restaurant and walked to the spot where I’d parked my red sports car. It was my pride and joy. Except it wasn’t there.

Just an empty patch of curb and the creeping feeling that maybe, I’d made a mistake. Wrong street? Wrong block?

(I even did that awkward slow turn people do when they’re trying to look casual while internally panicking.)

But the truth landed pretty quickly. The car was gone. Stolen.

Later, the police found it a few hundred kilometres away with the locks smashed, the ignition rewired, and the fuel tank dry. It looked like it had been in a Fast & Furious audition and hadn’t made the cut.

That was the last time something valuable was taken from me in a way I could see.

These days, the theft is harder to spot. It’s slower, quieter, more polite. Your content is being quietly scraped, summarized, and served up by AI systems trained on everything we’ve ever published.

And it’s making someone else a lot richer.

Theft, but Make It Billion-Dollar and Invisible

When I started blogging back in 2009, the deal was simple. You created something useful, hit publish, and if it was good people would find it. Traffic would follow. Maybe even a little income. It felt like the internet worked.

Then the rules changed.

First, came the algorithms. Then the snippets. Now we’ve got AI summaries that answer the user’s question without ever sending them to your website. (It’s like someone borrowing your book, copying the best bits, and then acting surprised when you ask for credit.)

Meanwhile, social platforms promised us visibility in exchange for content. And for a while, it worked. We posted. We built audiences. We played along.

Then came the bait-and-switch. Organic reach dropped off a cliff. Suddenly, the price of being seen was… advertising.

So here we are, years later, staring down trillion-dollar companies built on content they didn’t create, boosted by creators who never got a cut.

And sure, we didn’t say no. We clicked I agree. We signed the terms of service. But let’s not pretend it was an equal exchange.

We handed over our work in a kind of digital Faustian bargain—I gave you the content, and in return, you’ll offer a bit of visibility now, some traffic down the line, and if luck’s on your side, maybe even a little money.

Except now, the attention is gone, the traffic is drying up, and the only people getting rich are the ones who never had to make anything in the first place.

(Unless you count ad revenue and machine learning models as "making things.” Which, let’s be honest, they do.)

How Google’s AI Is Eating the Internet (And Your Traffic)

Google used to be the world’s most generous librarian. You asked a question, and it politely pointed you to the books, blogs, or articles that had the answer.

Now? It’s writing the answers itself and keeping the clicks.

That’s what the new AI Overviews are doing. Instead of sending you to the source, Google gives you a tidy little summary right there on the search page. It’s fast, convenient, and quietly  stealing  from the people who actually created the content. .

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Since the rollout of AI Overviews, several publishers have seen traffic nosedive. A study by Gizmodo found traffic losses ranging from 40% to 95% for some sites—especially those in affiliate marketing, product reviews, and evergreen educational content.

A publisher named “Time Stamped” lost 95% of its Google visibility. Forbes dropped by over 40%. These aren’t tiny personal blogs. These are major players, and they’re vanishing from the SERPs.

Google, of course, says the goal is “better user experience.” But the business model tells another story. Why send traffic to the source when you can keep users on the search page longer—and serve them ads?

Legal Whiplash

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, claiming their models (like ChatGPT and Bing) were trained on “millions” of NYT articles without permission or payment.

 In March 2025, a federal judge refused to dismiss most of the claims, allowing the case to advance. Recently, the Times also demanded OpenAI preserve all ChatGPT conversation logs (including deleted chats) indefinitely, citing need for evidence. OpenAI has appealed, calling the order “an overreach” and warning it could undermine user privacy—a debate that’s just heating up.

Getty Images is pushing back too. On June 9, 2025, its UK case against Stability AI kicked off in London’s High Court—and it’s a big one. Getty alleges Stability AI scraped “millions” of images to train its Stable Diffusion model without licenses. The outcome, expected over the next few weeks, may be a pivotal moment for how copyright applies to AI globally.

Google made $65.5 billion in ad revenue in Q1 of 2024 alone. That’s nearly $725 million per day—much of it built on content it didn’t pay to produce.

A name for what’s happening: enshittification.

It’s a real term. Coined by Cory Doctorow. And it describes exactly what’s happening here.

First, platforms are great for users.. Then they turn the screws to benefit advertisers. And eventually, they squeeze the advertisers too—until all the value is absorbed by the platform itself.

If you’ve ever wondered why your content feels like it’s shouting into the wind, or why your site visits dropped off a cliff even though you’re still publishing good stuff… this is probably why.

The rules have changed. The traffic is drying up. And the internet’s most powerful players aren’t even pretending to share anymore.

(Unless you’re a shareholder. Then you get a very different kind of summary—called a dividend.)

So What Now? Burnout? Rage? Back to Blogging?

Watching your traffic dry up while trillion-dollar companies get rich off your words, videos, and images can make anyone want to toss their laptop into the ocean and open a sandwich shop.

But before we spiral into collective burnout—or start rage-posting on X (again)—it’s worth remembering this: we’re not powerless. Just… a little disoriented.

Here’s what I believe still works.

1.  Own your relationship with your audience. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that relying on platforms to “deliver” our work is like trusting a vending machine that keeps your snack half the time. Build an email list. Start a direct channel. If you're not collecting your own audience, someone else is.

Facebook once promised creators visibility for content. Now, organic reach on business pages is less than 2%, according to Hootsuite. On Instagram, that number hovers around 9%, if you’re lucky and dancing.

Email, on the other hand, still delivers. Newsletters have an average open rate of 34% in media and publishing (Campaign Monitor, 2024). It’s not glamorous, but it’s yours. And no algorithm is going to throttle your subject line.

2. Diversify how people find you. Search is shifting, social is volatile, and AI is busy summarizing your blog posts without credit. So spread the risk. Podcasts, newsletters, niche platforms—it’s not about being everywhere, just not being stuck in one place.

A healthy audience ecosystem in 2025 might look like:

• A newsletter for direct reach
• A podcast or YouTube channel for discoverability
• A blog for long-tail SEO (yes, still worth it—especially with niche content)
• A presence on niche or federated platforms (more on that below)

According to HubSpot, over 50% of marketers are now investing in three or more platforms to reduce reliance on Google and Meta.

3. Support a better web (even if it sounds boring). You don’t need to be holding a protest sign outside Google HQ (though if you do, send photos). But supporting better data and AI practices, especially ones that actually value creators—is necessary.

And if you’re hearing words like ActivityPub or open social web and thinking they sound like bad indie bands… you're not alone. They’re the foundation of a new, decentralized internet. Platforms like Mastodon, Threads (which plans to adopt ActivityPub), and Pixelfed are built on this protocol—one where creators can share across platforms without algorithmic gatekeepers deciding what gets seen.  (We’ll explain those in the full article.)

The bottom line is that we might not be able to reverse the damage, but we can stop giving away what’s left of our reach without asking some serious questions first.

And maybe, just maybe, we go back to building things we actually own.

Final Thoughts

I got the car back, eventually.

It was barely drivable. The locks were wrecked, the ignition had been hotwired with a screwdriver, and the fuel tank was bone dry. It looked like it had been through a demolition derby. And lost.

Some of the digital tools we use today feel eerily similar. Stripped down, misused, and somehow still expected to get us where we’re going.

We’ve handed over our content, our reach, our attention for a promise that keeps changing. The question now isn’t whether the deal was fair. It’s whether we can rebuild something better before the tank runs out completely.

If this resonated, the full version of this piece is up on my website. It dives deeper into what’s really going on and what we can do about it.

And if you want practical tips (not panic) on how to navigate the AI-powered shift in content and business, subscribe to AI Navigator. It's where we share the tools, strategies, and occasional survival maps for creators and small businesses trying to stay visible without selling their soul.

Read the full piece.

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