The Truth About AI Slop

The end times are upon us. AI slop has flooded the Internet, and there is no hope. The prophecy of the Dead Internet Theory (aka the bot apocalypse) will be fulfilled, and we all will be forced to communicate face to face again, and even worse… go outside and touch grass. I'm exaggerating, but AI slop has become a concern for many who want the Internet to be an authentic place for humans to connect and share their creations. They don't want the Internet filled with low-quality content anyone can make in a few minutes by typing a prompt into an AI generator.

I'm an author. The concern about AI-generated content isn't exclusive to content creators on video platforms like YouTube. In the author community, there's a concern over AI-written books. These books are considered AI slop, and authors are worried that the market will be flooded with low-quality books.

Despite these concerns, I'm not worried about AI slop on the Internet or in the book space. Good content will always be in demand because, while slop has its place in content creation and always will, the need to engage in more thought-provoking material will always be there alongside the need for quality. Cheaply manufactured goods are everywhere, and they're great when you need something expendable, you're just getting into a hobby you're not sure you'll stick with, or you simply don't have the money for better-quality goods. But people hate it when they need a product that's well-made and can only find cheaply built ones. And no one wants to listen to a crying child who broke the cheaply made toy after you told them to be careful with it, and then they treat it like it's made of titanium. Then there's the frustration of a tool breaking on you, even though it's cheap and you didn't pay much for it, because you thought you would get more use out of it. Any slop, not just AI slop, is like a cheap product: good when you're not looking for something of quality, but it doesn't remove the need for quality.

When we go on the Internet, sometimes we are brain-dead, just need to kill some time, and aren't looking for mentally strenuous content, or we're just looking for something that will mildly amuse us for a short time. Slop, AI, or human-created, is what most people turn to in these situations, and it's why slop exists; it's filling a demand that we, the users, are generating. Good quality content is the same. The is a demand to learn, to laugh at a well crafted joke, to hear someone give their thoughtful opinion on a topic, to see a great animated video that tells a wonderful story, to be informed, to be entertained by a video from a content creator who puts a lot of effort into their videos as well as their editors, and so much more. We will always need such quality content because it fulfills the intangible needs we have as humans, and we know that a world filled with slop isn't an exciting one.

It's easier than ever to create slop thanks to AI-generated videos and pictures. All people have to do is type their idea into a box and hit "generate." Or people can generate a script by typing a prompt into ChatGPT and then using an AI voice to narrate it. AI does all the heavy lifting, and the only thing that still requires a human is video editing. As I write this, I wonder if there is already an AI video editor I just haven't heard about. Considering the leaps and bounds AI has made in recent years, I won't be surprised to find out that there is an AI video editor where you type a prompt in and get the desired editing effect without having to learn a piece of software.

The ease of AI-generated content is at the heart of the concern that AI-slop will take over the Internet. It's so easy, the barrier to entry is low both financially and knowledge-wise compared to buying a mic, a camera, lights, shooting a video, and paying an editor. And AI content creation is certainly less laborious for writing scripts. You don't have to write a script for a YouTube video because ChatGPT will do it for you. And as I've already mentioned, you can have ChatGPT write a script for you, then have an AI voice narrate it.

The thing is that there's always been slop. Any reality TV that centers around drama is slop. There was slop in pulp fiction. America's Funniest Home Videos and any short viral video of "epic fails" where someone injures themselves in a funny way are slop. Spicy romance books with horrible plots and little substance are slop. Formulaic music with bland and generic lyrics is slop. Slop has always existed, and it's been on the Internet long before AI. Yeah, AI does make it easier to create slop, but we've been dealing with slop since before the Internet.

AI has greatly democratized who can create content by making it easier to create content. Not every writer is Charles Dickens, and not every content creator will make high-quality videos. When the barriers to content creation, be it books or videos, are lowered, people will create slop. Since not everyone is going to be creating masterpieces and slop gets views, the amount is going to increase, and that's what we've seen.

Has the total amount of slop on the Internet increased? Overall, it has, but what about percentage-wise? There is a lot of AI-generated content, that's true, but how much of it is slop? If we combine all the content, both AI and non-AI, then what percentage of total content is slop? Is there more slop in AI-generated content than in human-created content? Has slop increased as a percentage of overall content during the era of AI generation, or has it remained the same? These are questions that we as Internet users need to answer if we are going to have honest conversations about AI.

What I'm trying to get at is that not all AI-generated content is AI-slop. Good content can be created with AI. Now, whether people should use AI to make their content, that's a question to be answered another time. But just because something is AI-generated doesn't mean it is slop. There are legitimate use cases for AI, after all, it's a tool.

AI slop is a buzzword right now, well, a buzz phrase if we're being technical, but while discussing it, we need to remember that slop has existed before AI and that not all AI-generated content is slop. There are questions about the ethical use of AI, and we should be having conversations about what are acceptable ways to use these technologies, which will likely become more sophisticated as time goes on. But just because something was made with an AI, it doesn't mean that anything made with artificial intelligence is bad or lacking in quality.

This brings me to my final point: humans make the slop. Again, the ease with which content can be made with AI is at the heart of the concern over AI slop. Yet, someone needed to have the idea to make the slop in order for the slop to have been made. AI slop isn't just driven by human demand; the supply is met by humans. The human element hasn't disappeared. Someone comes up with a foolish idea for a video and makes it. The way that video is made has changed, and the barrier to producing a video has dropped substantially because of AI. As I've said, this is part of the reason why we're seeing so much AI slop. Yet, content creation still remains a human-driven process. Just like when smartphones came out and social media took off, we're seeing people behave foolishly, but we'll also see creative brilliance and be amazed at what people have created. AI slop isn't going to stop the human spirit from using AI in ways that will move and uplift us.