Comment by Analemma_

I mean, I certainly would say “I’ve never seen a single commercial email that was valid and useful to me as a customer”, and this is entirely because of spam. Any unsolicited email with commercial intent goes instantly, reflexively, to the trash (plus whatever my spam filters prevent me from ever seeing to begin with). This presumably has cost me the opportunity to purchase things I genuinely would’ve found useful, and reduced the effectiveness of well-meaning people doing cold outreach for actually-good products, but spam has left me no choice.

In that sense, it has destroyed actual value as the noise crowds out the signal. AI could easily do the same to, like, all Internet communication.