Explore the rise of 'AI slop,' low-quality, surreal, AI-generated content flooding social media for views, and how it's become a lucrative, albeit controversial, profession for some creators in the algorithm-driven economy.
The internet of 2024-2025 is defined by 'AI slop,' a flood of low-quality, surreal, AI-generated content designed to farm views on social media. This phenomenon emerged with the advent of popular large language models like ChatGPT and Dall-E, democratizing content creation. Viral examples include 'Shrimp Jesus' (AI-generated images of deities fused with crustaceans), 'Ghiblification' (rendering images in Studio Ghibli's style, even for serious topics like deportations), videos of old women celebrating impossible birthdays, and 'erotic tractors.' While early AI slop featured glaring flaws like six-fingered hands, it remains largely uncanny, contextless, and driven by a pursuit of virality through minimal effort, often featuring surreal imagery and an abundance of cats. This content surge is attributed to an algorithmically optimized internet, coupled with a global economy offering diminishing returns for traditional work but vast fortunes for the lucky few who go viral. Creating AI slop has become a profession globally. Oleksandr, a Ukrainian creator, illustrates this, starting from debt to building a team managing hundreds of channels, generating up to $20,000 monthly from niches like AI-generated life stories and 'vulgar adult themes' like erotic tractors. Despite frequent channel takedowns by YouTube, he credits AI for changing his life, though he admits the work lacks artistic aspiration, describing YouTube as driven by 'clickbait and sexualisation.' This trend sparks contrasting views, with OpenAI's Sam Altman acknowledging the bizarre nature of AI's impact, while Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki condemns AI's use in art as 'an insult to life itself.' YouTube maintains that AI is a tool, and all content must adhere to community guidelines, removing policy-violating material.
