AI slop – the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views – is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Shrimp Jesus was quickly followed by hallmarks of the AI slop genre: videos of old women claiming to celebrate their 122nd birthday, and mini soap operas about the dramatic lives of cats. In some ways, AI slop has improved. In some ways, though, AI slop has hardly changed at all. Describing this flood of unreality as solely a technological phenomenon misses one of the main drivers of AI slop.

Source: The Guardian December 27, 2025 21:32 UTC