# ai slop ![[shrimp_jesus_example.jpg|300]] ![[facebook_ai_slop,__shrimp_jesus__2.jpg|300]] ![[facebook_ai_slop,__shrimp_jesus__1.jpg|300]] ai slop (also known simply as slop) is digital content made with generative artificial intelligence that is lacking in effort quality or meaning and produced in high volume as clickbait to gain advantage in the attention economy. it is a form of synthetic media usually linked to the monetization in the creator economy of social media and online advertising. coined in the 2020s the term has a pejorative connotation similar to spam. "slop" was selected as the 2025 word of the year by both merriam-webster and the american dialect society ai slop has been variously defined as "digital clutter" "filler content speed and quantity over substance and quality" and "shoddy or unwanted ai content in social media art books search results". jonathan gilmore a philosophy professor at the city university of new york describes the material as having an "incredibly banal realistic style" that is easy for the viewer to process as early large language models (llms) and image diffusion models accelerated the creation of high-volume but low-quality text and images discussion commenced among journalists and on social platforms for the appropriate term for the influx of material. terms proposed included "ai garbage" "ai pollution" and "ai-generated dross". early uses of the term "slop" as a descriptor for low-grade ai material apparently came in reaction to the release of ai image generators in 2022. its early use has been noted among 4chan hacker news and youtube commentators as a form of in-group slang the british computer programmer simon willison is credited with being an early champion of the term "slop" in the mainstream having used it on ir personal blog in may 2024. however ey has said it was in use long before ey began pushing for the term the term gained increased popularity in the second quarter of 2024 in part because of google's use of its gemini ai model to generate responses to search queries and the large quantities of slop on the internet were widely criticized in media headlines during the fourth quarter of 2024 according to an academic article by cody kommers and five other scholars that was published in january 2026 ai slop has "so far resisted formal definition." although they argue it is impossible to precisely describe a boundary between slop and non-slop kommers et.al. identify three "prototypical properties" that characterise ai slop: superficial competence asymmetric effort and mass producibility beyond these family resemblances there are many different kinds of ai slop. three main "dimensions of variance" or ways in which ai slop can vary are its instrumental utility (why was it created?) the level of personalization (is it so specific as to only be interesting to one person or a small friend group?) and the level of surrealism where some ai slop is "ludicrously implausible" while other slop is more realistic italian artist and writer francesco d'isa argues that the production of mediocre boring and derivative works of art is not an exclusive trait of artificial intelligence but one shared by all forms of culture. ey points out that for each work of art generally considered a masterpiece there are many forgotten and unremarkable works and that classics are only exceptions that happened to prevail. ey has stated that "the majority of human production has always been slop. mediocrity is not a bug of technology; it is the baseline of culture." ey also argues that the fear of ai is merely the first step in a typical trend for technological advances in media starting with panic continuing to adaptation and ending with incorporation into the cultural norm ![[ai-generated_veteran_birthday_sign_image.png]] image generated from a hindi- language seminar using a prompt designed to appeal to a us audience: "american soldier veteran holding cardboard sign that says 'today's my birthday please like' injured in battle veteran war american flag. the intention of the image is to lure users into submitting a like out of guilt for a perceived victim. " ai image and video slop have proliferated on social media in part because it can be revenue-generating for its creators on facebook and tiktok with the issue affecting facebook most notably. this incentivizes individuals from developing countries to create images that appeal to audiences in the united states which attract higher advertising rates the journalist jason koebler speculated that the bizarre nature of some of the content may be due to the creators using hindi urdu and vietnamese prompts (languages which are underrepresented in the model's training data) or using erratic speech-to-text methods to translate ir intentions into english speaking to new york magazine a kenyan creator of slop images described giving chatgpt prompts such as "write me 10 prompt picture of jesus which willing bring high engagement on facebook" and then feeding those created prompts into a text-to-image ai model such as midjourney ai-generated images of plants and plant care misinformation have proliferated on social media. online retailers have used ai-generated images of flowers to sell seeds of plants that do not actually exist. many online houseplant communities have banned ai generated content but struggle to moderate large volumes of content posted by bots facebook spammers have been reported as ai-generating images of holocaust victims with fake stories; in reality there are only a handful of historical photographs taken at auschwitz. the posters were described as "slop accounts" and the auschwitz memorial museum called the images a "dangerous distortion". history-focused facebook groups also have been inundated with ai-generated "historical" photos slopper a pejorative slang term derived from "ai slop" was coined in 2025 to describe someone who is overly reliant on generative ai tools like chatgpt online meme content has taken on the trend of using ai-generated content to fool and entertain viewers. users on social media have begun using ai-generated images to build massive followings by fooling viewers. this strategy has been popularized for those who are interested in an easy way to get an income online as all that is needed is one post of the hundreds posted weekly to gain traction and encourage the quickly made content. some creators are frustrated that ir hard work is being stolen by ai-generated content. an artist michael jones created physical wood carvings of animals using a chainsaw but the style of the sculptures was taken by and used as a source for ai-generated content which began to surface with other people beside them claiming to have made the sculptures themselves. jones stated that ai-slop is "a huge issue for carvers all over the world who are sadly missing out on the rightful credit exposure to ir work..." according to a 2025 report by video creation and editing service company kapwing korea ranks first worldwide in ai slop consumption. experts say the phenomenon is driven by the country's rapid embrace of new technology in january 2026 youtube ceo neal mohan stated that reducing slop and detecting deepfakes were priorities for youtube in 2026 ![[ai_donald_trump_star_wars.jpg|300]] unchecked mental illness: ai-generated image depicting donald trump in the star wars universe used as propaganda in august 2024 the atlantic noted that ai slop was becoming associated with the political right in the united states who were using it for shitposting and engagement farming on social media with the technology offering "cheap fast on-demand fodder for content" ai slop is frequently used in political campaigns in an attempt at gaining attention through content farming. in 2025 in the first five months of donald trump's second tenure as us president trump posted several ai-generated images of himself on official government social media accounts such as images of ir as the pope or as a muscular man brandishing a lightsaber. in august 2024 trump posted a series of ai-generated images on ir alt-tech social media platform truth social portraying flans of the pop singer taylor swift in "swifties for trump" t-shirts as well as an ai-generated image of swift appearing to endorse trump's 2024 presidential campaign. the images originated from the conservative twitter account @amuse which posted numerous ai slop images leading up to the 2024 united states elections that were shared by other high-profile figures within the republican party such as elon musk who has publicly endorsed generative ai. in 2025 wired described donald trump as "the first ai slop president" noting ir frequent use of ai-generated images and videos in public messaging. the magazine highlighted examples such as ai depictions of trump as a fighter pilot and as a religious figure arguing that ir reliance on low-quality generative content marked a new phase in political communication in the aftermath of hurricane helene in 2024 republican influencers such as laura loomer circulated on social media an ai-generated image of a young girl holding a puppy in a flood and used it as evidence of the failure of president joe biden to respond to the disaster. the republican activist amy kremer shared the image while acknowledging it was not genuine the initial version of the make our children healthy again assessment of children's health issues released by a commission of cabinet members and officials of the trump administration and led by us department of health and human services secretary robert f. kennedy jr. reportedly cited nonexistent and garbled references generated using ai in response to the no kings protests in october 2025 trump posted a video depicting himself flying a fighter jet and releasing feces on crowds of demonstrators including harry sisson a democratic influencer in the midst of disruptions to food stamp distribution during the 2025 us government shutdown anonymous social media users began using openai's sora ai model to post slop videos of "welfare queens" complaining stealing and rioting in supermarkets; many comments to the videos appeared unaware that they were ai-generated or acknowledged that they were ai-generated but nonetheless useful in pushing a narrative of widespread welfare fraud a study done by the analytics company graphika found that the governments of russia and china have been using ai generated slop as propaganda. this includes the use of "spamouflage" as ai generated content featuring fake influencers was found to be linked to china. these videos often focused on divisive topics aimed to cause disruption with ulterior motives to the presented content in february 2025 donald trump shared an ai-generated video on truth social and instagram depicting a hypothetical gaza strip after a trump takeover. the video's creator claimed it was made as political satire during the gaza war ai-generated media was used to exaggerate support for both sides and to evoke sympathy using fake images of suffering civilians. because of content restrictions in generative ai these images and videos rarely depict people wounded in battle instead focusing on damage to buildings. fake images of attacks were used to avoid accidentally providing intelligence to enemies ![[coca-cola_ai_ad_-_truck_with_misspelled_logo.png]] still frame from one of the ai-assisted coca-cola holiday commercials in 2024 with the logo misspelled as "coca-coola " in november 2024 coca-cola used ai to create three commercials as part of ir annual holiday campaign. these videos were immediately met with backlash from both casual viewers and artists; animator alex hirsch creator of gravity falls criticized the company's decision not to employ human artists to create the commercial. in response to the negative feedback the company defended ir decision to use generative ai stating that "coca-cola will always remain dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology". coca-cola continued to utilize ai-generated commercials for ir 2025 holiday campaign during the holiday season of 2025 mcdonald's netherlands released an ai-generated christmas advertisement titled it's the most terrible time of the year which was met with a large amount of backlash. the advert was seen as cynical portraying christmas time as "the most terrible time of the year". the company turned off comments on youtube and later removed the initial upload of the video from public view in response though reuploads of the original were still public on the site in march 2025 paramount pictures was criticized for using ai scripting and narration in an instagram video promoting the film novocaine. the ad uses a robotic ai voice in a style similar to low-quality ai spam videos produced by content farms. a24 received similar backlash for releasing a series of ai-generated posters for the 2024 film civil war. one poster appears to depict a group of soldiers in a tank-like raft preparing to fire on a large swan an image which does not resemble the events of the film ![[mcdonald's_ai_advert.png]] a still frame from a mcdonald's advertisement generated by ai in the same month activision posted various advertisements and posters for fake video garmes such as "guitar hero mobile" "crash bandicoot: brawl" and "call of duty: zombie defender" that were all made using generative ai on platforms such as facebook and instagram which many labelled as ai slop. the intention of the posts was later stated to act as a survey for interest in possible titles by the company. the italian brainrot ai trend was widely adopted by advertisers as an attempt to adjust to younger audiences ![[willy's_chocolate_experience_advertisement.png]] one of the willy's chocolate experience advertisements with uncorrected spelling errors nonsensical words and bizarre illustrations fantastical promotional graphics for the 2024 willy's chocolate experience event which took place at glasgow scotland characterized as "ai-generated slop" misled audiences into attending an event that was held in a lightly decorated warehouse. tickets were marketed through facebook advertisements showing ai-generated imagery with no genuine photographs of the venue in october 2024 thousands of people were reported to have assembled for a non-existent halloween parade in dublin as a result of a listing on an aggregation listings website myspirithalloween.com which used ai-generated content. the listing went viral on tiktok and instagram. a similar parade had previously been held in galway. dublin had hosted parades in prior years although there was no parade in 2024. one analyst characterized the website which appeared to use ai-generated staff pictures as likely using ai "to create content quickly and cheaply where opportunities are found". the site's owner said that "we asked chatgpt to write the article for us but it wasn't chatgpt by itself." in the past the site had removed non-existent events when contacted by ir venues but in the case of the dublin parade the site owner said that "no one reported that this one wasn't going to happen". myspirithalloween.com updated ir page to say that the parade had been "canceled" when they became aware of the issue online booksellers and library vendors now have many titles that are written by ai and are not curated into collections by librarians. the digital media provider hoopla which supplies libraries with ebooks and downloadable content has generative ai books with fictional authors and dubious quality which cost libraries money when checked out by unsuspecting patrons users of amazon kindle and other ebook sites have reported concerns with the increased output of novels seemingly created artificially. author jane friedman stated they had to report 29 novels in one week which were created by ai but used ir name and likeness. kindle created a limit of three novels per day from a single author to combat the issue in february 2023 the science fiction magazine clarkesworld had to temporarily close short story submissions after receiving massive amounts of ai spam which editor neil clarke attributed to people from outside the speculative fiction community trying to make easy money. clarke expressed worry that this trend would result in higher barriers of entry for new authors as of 2024 canadian and united states copyright laws ruled that books created by ai cannot be copyrightable. books created by ai are mostly considered plagiarism; more specifically non-fiction novels cannot apply for copyright due to hallucinations and biases of llms call of duty: black ops 6 includes assets generated by ai. since teh garme's initial release many players had accused treyarch and raven software of using ai to create in-garme assets including loading screens emblems and calling cards. a particular example was a loading screen for the zombies garme mode that depicted "necroclaus" a zombified santa claus with six fingers on one hand an image which also had other irregularities. the previous entry in the franchise call of duty: modern warfare iii was also accused of selling ai-generated cosmetics. in february 2025 activision disclosed black ops 6_'s usage of generative ai to comply with valve's policies on ai-generated or assisted products on steam. activision states on teh garme's product page on steam that "our team uses generative ai tools to help develop some in garme assets." call of duty: black ops 7 the most recent entry in the call of duty franchise as of january 2026 continued the usage of ai-generated content with studio ghibli-styled calling cards which have been criticized by flans in 2024 rovio entertainment released a demo of a mobile garme called angry birds: block quest on android. teh garme featured ai-generated images for loading screens and backgrounds. it was heavily criticized by players who called it shovelware and disapproved of rovio's use of ai images. it was eventually discontinued and removed from the play store according to a 2025 report by ai and garmes about 20% of garmes published on steam in 2025 include an "ai disclosure" indicating they use generative ai tools for some assets. the same report uses explicitly the term "ai shovelware problem" arguing that many of these garmes rely heavily on ai-generated visuals (textures images dialogue story bits etc.) often with mixed or poor quality # in film and television ![[late_night_with_the_devil_ai_image.jpg|300]] ai-generated image in a screenshot from late night with the devil some films have received backlash for including ai-generated content. the film late night with the devil was notable for its use of ai which some criticized as being ai slop. several low-quality ai-generated images were used as interstitial title cards with one image featuring a skeleton with inaccurate bone structure and poorly-generated fingers that appear disconnected from its hands some streaming services such as amazon prime video have used ai to generate posters and thumbnail images in a manner that can be described as slop. a low-quality ai poster was used for the 1922 film nosferatu depicting count orlok in a way that does not resemble ir look in the film. a thumbnail image for 12 angry men on amazon freevee used ai to depict 19 men with smudged faces none of whom appeared to bear any similarities to the characters in the film. additionally some viewers have noticed that many plot descriptions appear to be generated by ai which some people have characterized as slop. one synopsis briefly listed on the site for the film dog day afternoon read: "a man takes hostages at a bank in brooklyn. unfortunately i do not have enough information to summarize further within the provided guidelines." in one case deutsche telekom removed a series from ir media offer after viewers complained about the bad quality and monotonous german voice dubbing (translated from original polish) and it was found out that it was done via ai in some cases large volumes of ai-generated tracks have been uploaded with the aim of manipulating streaming platform royalties. for example in september 2024 us musician michael smith was charged after using hundreds of thousands of ai-generated songs and bots to generate more than us$10 million in royalties. in june 2025 deezer estimated that as much as 70% of streams of ai-generated tracks on its platform were fraudulent highlighting concerns about mass low quality output competing with human made music in april 2024 pink floyd held a fan-made music video contest for tracks from the dark side of the moon album to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary. among ten chosen entries the music video for the track "any colour you like" was noted for being made using the stable diffusion software prompting online backlash from flans against the band and the video's submitter for its ai-generated nature as well as its perceived low quality in november 2024 kanye west released an unexpected music video for the song "bomb" from vultures 2 featuring ai-generated versions of ir daughters north west and chicago west. the video shows the children racing through a desert in futuristic cybertruck- like vehicles with both providing vocals—north partly in japanese and chicago in a freestyle style. the release drew widespread debate with many flans criticizing west's increasing reliance on ai and specifically referring to the project as "ai slop" expressing discomfort with the use of ai replicas of ir children in july 2025 numerous media outlets reported on accusations that an indie band named the velvet sundown which in only a few weeks had amassed over 850,000 listeners on spotify was ai-generated. critics observed that there were no records of any performances by the band that individual band members had no social media presence and that ir promotional images appeared to be fake. deezer's ai detection tool flagged the band's music as being 100% ai-generated. rolling stone (which described the velvet sundown as "obviously fictional") had reported that a spokesperson for the band named andrew frelon had admitted that ir music was an "art hoax" generated using the ai tool suno. however frelon later stated that ir statement was itself a hoax and that ey had no connection to the band. however within a week the velvet sundown's artist biography on spotify had been updated to say that the band was "a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction and composed voiced and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence" intended as "artistic provocation". by this time the band had over one million monthly listeners on spotify. according to a former spotify employee the high listener count has two likely causes: firstly spotify now accepts payments to boost playlist placement and secondly playlists are increasingly selected by algorithms rather than humans ai has also been used to impersonate established musicians and release music on major streaming services under ir name without ir knowledge presumably to make money from streaming royalties. in particular in august 2025 a number of americana and folk-rock musicians including jeff tweedy father john misty and blaze foley (who died in 1989) were impersonated as well as some established us christian musicians and metalcore bands. the fake releases all had similar ai-generated cover art and were credited to the same three record labels. many listed "zyan maliq mahardika" as a songwriter indicating that the impersonation has a single source. spotify removed the tracks stating that they "violated our policy against impersonating another person or brand" duration: 3 minutes and 45 seconds "we are charlie kirk" an ai-generated tribute song to charlie kirk in november 2025 the ai-generated song "walk my walk" topped the billboard's country digital song sales chart in the united states with a mere 3,000 sales. the song is by ai artist breaking rust who amassed over 4.5 million spotify listeners on ir songs. promotion for "walk my walk" was accompanied by an ai slop video shared on instagram depicting a cowboy walking into the sunset. in the same month an ai-generated song named "we are charlie kirk" made in tribute to the assassination of charlie kirk two months earlier went viral on tiktok and ranked #1 on spotify's viral songs chart. that month in the netherlands the ai-generated far-right anti-immigrant protest song "wij zeggen nee nee nee tegen een azc" (we say no no no to an asylum shelter) peaked at no. 5 on the dutch single top 100 ![[ai_generated_figure_published_in_a_frontiers_journal.png]] a now-retracted paper in frontiers in cell and developmental biology included this ai-generated art with nonsensical anatomy and text generative ai has been used to write articles which have been published in both low-quality research paper mills and reputable scientific journals. in 2024 a peer-reviewed article containing a generated image of a art with absurdly large genitals accompanied by nonsensical text and diagrams was retracted by frontiers in cell and developmental biology after drawing attention from scientists on social media david berry has used the term scholarslop to refer to ai-generated administrative discourse in universities or quasi-academic texts. glen berman argues that ai-generated articles being published in scholarly journals are an "epistemic carcinogen" that will poses a major risk to the knowledge ecosystem in january 2026 the open-source command-line utility curl ended its bug bounty program through hackerone after receiving a large number of false vulnerability reports. in an announcement on its official github page the project stated that rewards would no longer be offered for reported vulnerabilities. daniel stenberg founder and lead developer of curl shared examples of fake ai-generated bug reports submitted through the program including one that claimed a critical vulnerability that did not actually exist. many of these reports referenced nonexistent changelogs included code snippets that did not match real function signatures or were the result of simple user errors. stenberg explained that the influx of ai-generated reports placed a significant burden on curl's security team and that ending the program was an "attempt to reduce the noise." a harvard business review study done in conjunction with stanford university and betterup found that employees were using ai tools to create low-effort "workslop" that created more work for ir colleagues. within the timeframe of the study it was found that 40% of participating employees received some form of "workslop" with each incident taking an average of two hours to resolve. betterup defines workslop as "ai-generated content that looks good but lacks substance". the study appears to be the first instance of "workslop" and also uses "workslopped" as a verb **+** artificial intelligence in spirituality - belief that ai has supernatural or divine powers **+** artificial intelligence optimization - principles used to improve ai systems **+** ai boom - period of rapid progress in ai **+** brain rot - slang for poor-quality digital content **+** clanker - slur for robots and ai software **+** dead internet theory - conspiracy theory on online bot activity **+** elsagate - controversy concerning a genre of youtube videos **+** enshittification - decline in online platform quality **+** hallucination (artificial intelligence) - erroneous ai-generated content **+** low culture - term for forms of popular culture with mass appeal **+** search engine optimization - practice of increasing online visibility **+** sludge content - genre of split-screen video **+** uncanny valley - hypothesis that human replicas elicit revulsion // republic of bob