Once upon a time, we really used to put a lot of effort into spinning content – written, visual, and interactive – to publish on the internet. Now? Not so much…
Get this – an Indian AI slop channel garnered more than 2.76 million subscribers in 2025, with 619 videos. The subject? An AI-generated “realistic” monkey telling stories through supposedly dramatic, hilarious, and heart-touching human-style situations. And according to a Kapwing study, this channel amassed annual earnings of more than USD 4 million (INR 38 crore)!
The Infiltration of AI Slop
Does spending time on the internet lately feel like you’re drowning in a sea of mediocre AI-generated content? That’s because it’s probably true. Like much, sludge, and slime, slop has that wet sound of something you definitely don’t want to touch. In fact, the word “slop” has been thrown around so much in 2025 that editors at Merriam-Webster have actually anointed it as the “word of the year.”
Are we descending into an AI slop dystopia? There’s definitely evidence to support it. However, it’s more than just AI-generated images that we have to groan about. Back in March 2025, the White House shared an AI-generated image of ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) detaining a Dominican woman on charges of fentanyl trafficking. The entertainment section is perhaps the topmost arena that’s been inundated with AI slop content.
According to the same Kapwing study, more than one in every five videos that YouTube’s Shorts algorithm shows new users is low-quality, AI-generated content. Even Mashable’s Tim Marcin chimed in, reporting that there was a whole world of just animal-based AI slop – heavy machines cleaning barnacles off whales, musicians with critters for companions, emotional support kangaroos (yes!), and surveillance tapes “catching” fake animals.
The written word isn’t doing too well either; we’re stooping to new lows in that arena, too. There has been such an influx of AI-generated book rewrites on Amazon that the company has now introduced a new rule limiting the number of books that authors can self-publish on the website. Did we mention that there are now AI-generated recipes too?
Why Is This Slop-ification Happening?
Lots of slop is created by people who are hustling for money. So, when it comes to creators, the payoff is evident. The bar to enter the content-making market is really low, so it’s a lot more possible for people not just to produce content, but also to do so in huge volumes. If one posts 100 videos, the audience is so large that 1 or 2 of them definitely end up getting some traction.” It’s not a craft anymore; it’s a commodity designed purely for view farming and meant to fool the viewer just long enough to grab a sliver of their attention – and the monies.
The AI slop problem isn’t a one-sided issue; its consumption is equally concerning. On the other side is the audience that has now developed a voracious appetite for AI slop and is feeding into the culture. That’s what makes AI slop so attractive: it’s the path of least psychological resistance as people constantly scroll, slack-jawed, as the algorithm continues to push content towards them. In a world where political chaos, humanity crises, and climate disasters is an everyday story, there’s something soothing about content that reveals nothing about you, expects nothing from you, and asks nothing of you.
It’s this generational tolerance for brainrot (hypnotic, substance-free content) that’s now being normalised, feeding the frenzy of endless scrolling behaviour and making low-quality consumption patterns a mainstay.
Therein lies the rub. Slop has been able to blend into our lives because it resembles the culture we’ve already designed for ourselves, wearing down the boundary between what’s real and what’s rendered.
What’s Real – And What’s Not
According to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, we might have to start labelling genuine content, given how realistic fake content is getting – and he might not be wrong. Today, we’re questioning the authenticity of everything we see on the internet, with scepticism being the new normal. Besides paying attention to who’s sharing something and why, there are also creative tools, like web extensions, being designed to help people identify synthetic content.
However, we’re also going to need smarter verification layers, prioritise performance over surface-level metrics for internet content, and ensure greater transparency in the supply chain overall.
Is Good Content Dying A Fast Death?
Attention beats taste every single time, and the fact of the matter is that the slop-ification is only going to get worse before it can possibly get better.
As more AI tools surface and people experiment with them, this is a tide that’s not going to slow down. Hence, it’s more important than ever to start making clear distinction between what’s truly human art and what’s AI-generated content. While we’re still very hopeful about getting better AI labels in the future, we seriously need to rethink how we approach creative AI content (and slop) before it completely takes over our online lives.
In case you missed:
- The Internet’s AI Slop Problem
- Is Generative AI Spinning a New World Wide Web?
- From Ranking to Relevance: The Rise Of Generative Engine Optimisation
- Food For Thought: Are AI-Powered Recipes Any Good?
- Will AI Be the End of Web Searches?
- The AI Student Cheating Crisis: Who Are The Real Victims?
- From Memecoin To Meaning
- Crypto Heists: How To Keep Your Cryptocurrency Safe?
- AI + Web3: Making A Smarter Internet
- Should Children Be Talking To AI Chatbots?
