AI slop

"AI slop", often simply "slop", is a derogatory term for low-quality media, including writing and images, made using generative artificial intelligence technology. Coined in the 2020s, the term has a derogatory connotation akin to "spam".
It has been variously defined as "digital clutter", "filler content produced by AI tools that prioritize speed and quantity over substance and quality", and "shoddy or unwanted AI content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results".
Jonathan Gilmore, Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, describes the "incredibly banal, realistic style" of AI slop as being "very easy to process".
As large language models (LLMs) and image diffusion models accelerated the creation of high-volume but low-quality written content and images, discussion commenced for the appropriate term for the volume. 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 his personal blog in May 2024. However, he has said it was in use long before he 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 was widely used in media headlines by the fourth quarter of 2024.
Research found that training LLMs on slop causes model collapse: a consistent decrease in the lexical, syntactic, and semantic diversity of the model outputs through successive iterations, notably remarkable for tasks demanding high levels of creativity. AI slop also happens when the same content is continuously refined, paraphrased, or reprocessed by LLMs, with each output becoming the input for the next iteration. Research has shown that this process causes information to gradually distort as it passes through a chain of LLMs, a phenomenon reminiscent of a classic communication exercise known as telephone game.
AI image and video slop proliferated on social media in part because it was revenue-generating for its creators on Facebook and TikTok. 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 their 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 service such as Midjourney.
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, 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 August 2024, Donald Trump posted a series of AI-generated images on the far-right social media platform Truth Social that portrayed fans of Taylor Swift in "Swifties for Trump" T-shirts, as well as a photo of the singer herself 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 election that were shared by other high profile Republican figures, such as Elon Musk.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in the United States, members of the Republican Party circulated 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. Some, like Amy Kremer, shared the image on social media even while acknowledging that it was not genuine.
In February 2025, President Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting images of a transformed Gaza Strip into a luxury resort. It contained phrases such as "Trump Gaza is finally here!" and "Donald's coming to set you free". The low-quality AI-generated slop video has been criticized as propaganda in favor of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza genocide.
In March 2025, the official White House social media account posted an AI-generated image depicting the arrest of an immigrant woman convicted of fentanyl trafficking in a style reminiscent of Studio Ghibli animations. The image, described by critics as dehumanizing, portrayed a stylized scene of law enforcement apprehending a woman with exaggerated features commonly associated with Studio Ghibli's artistic style. One of the woman's hands has seven fingers, a signature of many low-quality AI-slop generated images. The post, which was part of the Trump administration's campaign to highlight its immigration policies, drew immediate backlash from civil rights groups, immigration advocates, and animation fans. Critics argued that the use of a beloved animation style to illustrate a sensitive political issue was both inappropriate and insensitive. Damon Beres of The Atlantic argued that though he didn't find the image distasteful beause of the use of the AI, he considered it "a cruel meme about a person's life".
In November 2024, Coca-Cola used artificial intelligence to create three commercials as part of their annual holiday campaign. These videos were immediately met with negative reception from both casual viewers and artists, with animator Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, criticizing the company's decision to not employ human artists to create the commercial. In response to the negative feedback, the company defended their decision to use generative artificial intelligence stating that "Coca-Cola will always remain dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology".
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.
In the same month, Activision posted various advertisements and posters for fake video games 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 point of this was to survey people that are interested in them potentially becoming real video games.
Fantastical promotional graphics for the 2024 Willy's Chocolate Experience event, characterized as "AI-generated slop", misled audiences into attending an event that was held in a cheaply 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. While a similar parade had been held in Galway, and Dublin had hosted parades in prior years, there was no parade in Dublin in 2024. One analyst characterized the website, which appeared to use AI-generated staff pictures, as likely using artificial intelligence "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 their 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 their 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.
The 2024 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 includes assets generated by artificial intelligence. Since the game's initial release, many players had accused Treyarch and Raven Software of using AI to create in-game assets, including loading screens, emblems, and calling cards. A particular example was a loading screen for the zombies game 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 Call of Duty franchise was also accused of selling AI-generated cosmetics.
In February 2025, Activision disclosed Black Ops 6's usage of generative artificial intelligence to comply with Valve's policies on AI-generated or assisted products on Steam. Activision states on the game's product page on Steam that "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets."
Foamstars, a multiplayer third-person shooter released by Square Enix in 2024, features in-game music with cover art that were generated using Midjourney. Square Enix confirmed the use of AI, but defended the decision, saying that they wanted to "experiment" with artificial intelligence technologies and claiming that the generated assets make up "about 0.01% or even less" of game content.
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 his 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."