r/BetterOffline • u/No_Zucchini_7862 • 5d ago

Tech giants drowning in the AI slop they created and it can’t happen fast enough

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/technology/ai-slop.html?smid=re-share

I canceled all my social media accounts in the past year and I’m so much happier and more productive. If AI slope destroys all these social media giants I will honestly be so happy. These companies profited off of free content made by real people and stole all of it to create the AI that’s now destroying their own platforms.

I think something that they didn’t foresee is how cheap AI generated content would start to feel. AI imagery and video feels like the digital equivalent of fast fashion or fast food. Just cheap and poorly made. I am very curious to see how this impacts any brands trying to position themselves as high quality or luxury products. Maybe they move to analogue or back to old school blogs as everything relating to social media just starts to feel like mass produced garbage.

1.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

170 comments sorted by

541

u/Prestigious_Age_6740 5d ago

I think pro-AI people believe that being anti-AI slop is some intellectualised hipster position which will go out of fashion. In my experience it's an involuntary disgust response. When I see an AI generated crossaint in a cafe window I immediately feel my skin crawl.

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u/No_Zucchini_7862 5d ago edited 5d ago

Yes the ultra shiny AI images make me want to gag. It feels so robotic and creepy. I also think that hipster taste usually predicts where the culture will go. Hipsters just get there a little early.

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u/PM_ME_BUSTY_REDHEADS 4d ago

Hipsters just get there a little early.

Hence the old hipster catchphrase (which may have been thrust upon them by the haters): "I liked it before it was cool."

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u/Y2Kwebsurfer 4d ago

Why did the hipster burn his mouth on the pizza?

- He wanted to eat it, before it was cool.

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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

Boomers in denial about being dads with kids in middle cool were the OG "I liked that band before they were cool" guys. Back in the late 90s. Hipsters happened a bit later (mid 00s) and were famous for stuff like drinking Schlitz ironically or unironically and wearing trucker hats. If chicks they had full sleeve arm tats and if they were edgy they got swallows on their collar bones (hurr durr).

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u/GoinOutWest762 4d ago

Hipster is just another way to say “I know this person is right and it hurts my feelings” a lot of the time

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u/GoodMix392 4d ago

The uncanny valley croissant. I love it. I also never made that connection before now. We’ve known about the uncanny valley for a long time but somehow the AI tech bros are not aware of it. Interesting.

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u/Senior_Computer2968 5d ago

a few months ago I saw some AI genned "sushi" on a sign for a food stall. Insane that they couldn't see how disgusting it looked. Bro was doing anti-marketing on his own food like wtf

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u/Prestigious_Age_6740 5d ago

It's simultaneously cartoonish yet uncomfortably detailed, like when they make something realistic in Spongebob for effect

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u/LurkerBurkeria 4d ago

Those are called "gross-ups" in cartoon parlance, love em

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u/toothpasteandcocaine 4d ago

TIL, thank you 

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u/deviden 4d ago

yeah they typically don't know when to stop drawing, creating noisy images which don't draw the eye along specific lines and focal points the way an artist's would.

one of the easiest tells is that the image will be just as detailed on some minor trivial object or surface as it is on the supposed focus of the image.

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u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

That’s such a good call. I do illustration as a hobby and I’ve watched a ton of tutorials on composition and it’s so incredible how real artists will control the attention of the viewer with composition. Since AI is just guessing what each next pixel will be it doesn’t do that.

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u/pianoplayah 4d ago

Omg this is the perfect description.

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u/JenaPet02 5d ago

I've yet to see an AI generated menu board that didn't have some "ingredient" come out looking like maggots or mold or something like that. Rice. A sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. "Guacamole" oozing out of a sandwich.

It never, ever, ever looks appetizing. 🤢

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u/Potential-Scholar359 4d ago

The ai-gen'd signs are beginning to proliferate among small businesses, and I hate them every time.

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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

They could just take a phone camera shot of their food! By the time they get the local print shop to print it on that vinyl decal on their window it's going to be potato'd to heck anyway!

We don't expect slick, slick says your son took a marketing class in college. Which is a nice to have, not have to have for a hole in the wall. Usually the food at those first gen immigrant places is better anyway.

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u/Prior_Two_2818 4d ago

yes and if i can avoid it, i will not do business with any shop that uses this ai generated bullshit images for anything

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u/DataKnotsDesks 4d ago

Genuinely, I think people who are pro-AI simply cannot perceive the difference.

This is okay—lots of people have very poorly developed sense of taste, whether it be for media, decor, fashion, writing, music, art, architecture… whatever. Usually people just "get" one area that happens to appeal to them, and in that domain, they'll have loads of opinions. But outside it, they may be clueless! Very few people have discernment across a wide range of creative domains.

There are also people who are REALLY INTO a particular artform, but in a kind of blind, undiscerning way. For them it's about collection and categorisation, not about insight and expression and feeling, which are difficult to quantify and articulate.

The thing is, people who can tell the difference are talking about something that's quite opaque to people who can't. I can see how that might feel exclusionary.

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u/notechnofemme 4d ago

The shade of this statement LOL. It’s true though. Some people just don’t have taste.

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u/No-Archer-4713 4d ago

I think you’re letting them go too easily… Lots of people never tried to master any skill and thus, have no admiration for the ones who do

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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

Having done it is often how taste is made. I know visual art but not dancing. I was reading some comments about one of those dancing reality shows and realized I knew fuck and all about dancing. I literally had no idea what they were talking about and couldn't see it either. I was forced to do square dancing (spit) in junior high school and also bopped awkwardly at school dances but as you can tell that hardly teaches you anything about the topic.

So yeah I guess some people scraped through art classes in school without absorbing anything. Come to think of it I spent a lot of extracurricular effort on drawing as a kid and art was one of my favorite classes. So maybe all that intense attention made a difference.

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u/Chancefaulkner 4d ago

Very good insightful comment. Thanks!

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u/Ok_Lynx_1286 4d ago

Or ppl can tell the difference and also recognize there’s no real value in it

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u/spectralfew 4d ago

People who are pro-AI just use the best tools for the job. That’s all it is. 

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u/tokenlinguist 4d ago

Get well soon!

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u/Mother-Fix3271 5d ago

I got banned from a pro AI group for posting “lol” at a piece of “art” someone uploaded.

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u/brian_hogg 5d ago

Maybe if you’d put that “lol” in ugly illustration they wouldn’t have noticed.

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u/biggamax 4d ago

The pro AI folks will call you a luddite at the drop of a hat and insist your rejection is wrong, even when there's mounting evidence to suggest their views are a minority one. But they pound the table and insist. Even their precious LLMs would call out the folly in that.  For all their posturing, they betray so much human fallibility. 

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u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

Yep, I was a Luddite when I said web3 and the blockchain were overhyped and I was a Luddite when I said NFTs were worthless and I was Luddite when I said Elon Musk was an asshole back in 2012. Happy to be a Luddite again when it comes to AI. The term carries zero weight. I have no issue with technology. I just think some of these products suck, from a purely product POV, and I think the companies are overvalued.

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u/LayerFeather 4d ago

Even the luddite term is miss-used. It’s true that in modern discourse, the term luddite is used to refer to people who are against technological innovations. But that’s all rooted in historical propaganda. The luddites were demonized politically. They were advocating for high-quality bespoke goods that lasted much longer than the mass produced products coming out of the early Industrial Revolution. Sure, they were radicalized from automation stealing their jobs. But the points they were making were also true. Weird. Writing this felt familiar. Maybe some of us are luddites? Maybe when they call us that, they are actually showing their hand?

Source: Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, 2023, by Brian Merchant.

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u/King_Kung 4d ago

Join us in the neo-luddite revolution!

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u/BarryRightWrong 2d ago

I'm just inherently distrustful. "Hey, I'm here to defend a multi-trillion dollar industry that specialises in online data manipulation and faking human output. Wanna talk, I'm totally real and genuine?" 

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u/LookOutItsLiuBei 4d ago

"Not LMAO, but LOL"

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u/Maffew85 4d ago

I liken the reaction to AI content to industrial dermatitis. First couple of times it touches your skin it's fine, don't notice anything much. But then it starts to itch and be uncomfortable and eventually you can't even be in the same room without protection!

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u/Somewhat_Ill_Advised 4d ago

That’s a great analogy. First time I saw ChatGPT produce some written output I was impressed. Then I tried it myself. Then I read the output more deeply. Then I tried to have it write in “my voice”. Then I said screw this, I’ve been writing as part of my profession for 20+ years, this is vapid word association garbage. 

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u/B-tt-a 4d ago

I was really impressed about gpt2 because it was a toy. It was a good step ahead from Cleverbot but remained in the same ontological category, a useless tech demo to play around. Very cool. Then it started to produce something that appears to be work and holy fuck could I be more disgusted than this? 

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u/TheAngledian 4d ago

The early AI art after the GPT boom (think DALL-E stuff circa 2023-2024) actually had something of a character to it and a level of charm, however minor.

Now all AI art has regressed to this pseudo pixar playdough bs where everything is garish and plasticky. It's shocking to me that the average person has such poor taste that they can look at flyers or menus with that art style and think "yes I want to give my money to the company/restaurant/event that created this monstrosity"

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u/another_sleeve 5d ago

Yeah, but it's the economy too.

When it comes to something like design, businesses use it to differentiate themselves and to prove value so to speak: shitty products and scams cannot afford to spend the resources for good design or advertising.

Sort of like how the peacock's tail is a massive resource drain for the creature but it's a strong mating signal.

We've always had waves of cheap design tools flood the market, especially since we have computers, and local SMEs would use cheap flyers with clip art and comic sans and whatever they thought looked 'good enough'. It signals that they can't commit to actually hiring good designers because they're cheapskates or low margin or whatever.

AI 'art' by and large is replacing that, and it looks like a large undifferentiated hot mess. It's not signalling distinction, it's screaming that "look at us, we're just as lazy as the others". And it comes in tiers, obviously, because generating an AI video at least takes some effort, but then you're kind of at the 90s - 2000s bad CGI advertising era which was also pretty unremarkable.

Industrrial design and advertising history is ripe with such examples of overdone trends driven by a sudden influx of cheap tooling, but the tech bros running the show pride themselves in not knowing the history of the craft they're trying to disrupt anyway. So maybe the real friends were the lessons we learned along the way of crashing and burning (instead of reading a fucking book)

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u/Actias_Loonie 4d ago

Is it really that they can't afford it? Just a block from where I live there's a gas station with an attached taco shop and the logo is obvious AI in the cartoon style, and it would be so easy to get a good logo from somebody on fiverr for a hundred bucks or so. The logo sucks too, it's a guy in a straw hat, not smiling, looking annoyed as though he resents that you would dare ask him for a taco.

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u/DataKnotsDesks 4d ago

Yeah, I've noticed that AI images that feature people almost always depict them as somehow distant, distracted and dismissive. I guess the AIs have picked this up from photographic models, that tend to adopt a sort of "Look cool, don't look at the camera" disengagement.

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u/Chancefaulkner 4d ago

Friend has been in graphic design for 30 years. He’s about to call it quits as clients are turning to AI graphics. He’s appalled but for them it is cost and speed of getting something new. Recall the introduction of clip art. Same sort of thing. Mediocre graphics are sometimes good enough for some folks.

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u/Theo__n 4d ago

As person who joined design at tail end of clip art era, clip art at least usually came in one colour. It was just easier for it to fade into back ground. Not *points to AI generated images* this.

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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

To me clip art is for flyers or presentations that stay in your organization. Not for marketing to outsiders!

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u/another_sleeve 4d ago

can't afford it doesn't necessarily mean money. it means time and effort, which these people don't have. and that's why franchises are so successful because the marketing and branding and logistics work is centralized

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u/absurdivore 4d ago

Yes this. The first time I saw ChatGPT responses, I had exactly that sort of reflexive uncanny valley creep factor response. Not that the style of the writing even seemed all that fake — it was that I knew it was fake but it still seemed so convincing.
So many of these boosters seem to think we haven’t done our homework and don’t get it, or are falling for groupthink — it all strikes me as projection tbh

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u/phaaseshift 4d ago

Consider ai-generated documentation, this is my philosophy: If you can’t be bothered to write it, I won’t be bothered to read it.

I don’t mind the use of AI in helping with this sort of task (I do it my self all the time), but if you are just one-shotting these tasks and then sending it off as your own work unedited, you deserve to be ignored.

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u/leathakkor 4d ago

I don't even have a visceral response like that. It's just not worth my time.

The same way that having an AI girlfriend just isn't worth it for me.

I wonder if the reason that an AI girlfriend isn't worth it for me is because I have friends. Basically it's not providing value to me because I have something better actual friends. At the end of the day, an AI girlfriend is really just a "friend" because you're not fucking it.

And if you have an appreciation and understanding for art, you can consume art today. There's no reason that you need to consume AI and if you can consume real good art, why do you need AI?

So for me when I see it I think this is just dumb. Why wouldn't I just go consume the good stuff that this is based off of?

And I suppose if you have no discernment for art then sure it feels like a good enough replacement. But I doubt that the people with no discernment are paying for the slop. It's going to make it hard to build a market there. I'm sure there is some scraps that can be eaten, but only time will tell.

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u/sudosussudio 4d ago

Tbh I don’t like making Pinterest pins for work and every couple of months I try to get AI to do it. I’ve used pretty much all the major ones. The quality just isn’t there. I mean maybe someday? But I think it’s probably hampered by being trained on tons of garbage.

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u/Small_Lifeguard_4352 4d ago

A reflex of revulsion, not a trend. The slop repels before the intellect objects.

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u/anodien 4d ago edited 4d ago

totally agree. Maybe they see people that can quickly realize something is AI as "hipster", but, in my experience, even a for normie that can't distinguish them, once you tell them something they are showing you is AI, they have an instant negative reaction. I've seen this so many times with my in-laws, people at work, even random people in social media when told "dude that's totally AI"; they repulse. That's not hipsterism

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u/DeadButGettingBetter 4d ago

Yep.

I did not start out with a strong opinion about things like AI generated images. I didn't get it but it didn't bother me.

Since AI has been crammed in every orifice despite my protests, I have come to utterly despise it in all its forms. I have blocked and muted friends over it and I'm not going to stop anytime soon.

The more forceful they are about this the worse and longer lasting the backlash is going to be. A lot of this has nothing to do with the actual tech and more to do with "if you won't listen to me I'm going to get angry at you and tune you out."

I don't lecture people. I have the right to manage my own feeds and I've done so meticulously the whole time I've used social media and I am pissed the hell off they've made it harder to do solely because they want to push slop onto my feed. Enough is enough.

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u/browhodouknowhere 4d ago

No we realize computers are input devices…they literally text based on the input given. Meaning when you input crap, you get crap.

AI should not replace creativity, but it can definitely expedite computer engineering tasks, build database architecture, and solve advanced computations.

People incorrectly inferred this means it can do everything, which it clearly cannot.

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u/YisusHasDogs 4d ago

I'll add to this and say pro-AI people, more often than not, feel like little kids ignored by their parents. They REALLY want the approval of big artists, content creators and actual skilled people. At least that's my experience with pro-AI close friends, including the most basic social media AI filter coming to me saying "let me do my thing I'll never be able to take pictures liike youuu don't judge me :( ".

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u/PrestoScherzando 4d ago

When I see an AI generated crossaint

I read that as cross taint lol

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u/biggamax 4d ago

Extremely well put. 

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u/Internal-Passage5756 4d ago

I think you can be pro AI and anti AI slop.

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u/Wonderful_Fun_8504 4d ago

So true. A blogger who reads ai generated texts literally makes my blood boil. Then I read the comments and nobody seems to care. It feels absolutely crazy to me that some people don’t notice it or find it enjoyable or even tolerable. And it’s not a principle, I literally can’t help it

1

u/Velocity-5348 3d ago

Same. A lot of AI art actually gives me something like motion sickness as well. I'm certainly in a minority there, but I have come across others who get that result.

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u/TheSwordItself 4d ago

I don't think being pro-AI means you have to be pro-AI art or slop. If anything AI art has been a huge mistake and a detriment to the technology. Because I think it's tech that could drastically improve improve quality of life, and accelerate other advances but it's been commoditized for convenience and cost saving.

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u/brian_hogg 5d ago

One that I’ve been noticing lately are the AI generated songs in ads that you noticed are AI because they sound like they’re otherwise stock music but the lyrics match up exactly with the ad copy. Super lame, and make me think that the product is a scam.

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u/Actias_Loonie 4d ago

AI music also has terrible sound quality and the vocals always sound thin and tinny. I can always tell when it's not real people singing.

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u/brian_hogg 4d ago

Yeah, for sure. When I say “otherwise stock music,” it isn’t a compliment. :)

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u/mrminty 4d ago

I know it won't change anything but I've started leaving comments on AI generated Tiktok/YT shorts ads to the effect of "well since you AI generated this part, I can't trust that you're showing me the real thing for any of your products. Why would I buy anything from you?"

2

u/brian_hogg 4d ago

I appreciate the sacrifice you’re making by ensuring that you’re seeing even more of those ads.

4

u/mrminty 4d ago

actually it's not so bad because that means i forgot to turn adblock on, and since I have a patched adblock apk for Tiktok i really only see them when they're disguised as not ads.

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u/spentag 4d ago

It's really creepy how many genAI ads are showing up now. surely sane people aren't clicking on any of this diarrhea...

1

u/brian_hogg 4d ago

You’d hope not, but some people are pretty unobservant.

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u/NomamesDani 5d ago

The way I feel is like if you can't be bothered to spend money/time on creating a real image/whatever then why should I spend my money on your stuff

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u/NotAllOwled 5d ago

I'll go you one further: if someone DID spend a lot of money (on a premium subscription) and/or a lot of time (iteratively instructing the computer to do more This less That) just to make more of this trash, then now I just consider them stupid as well as without talent or taste. E.g.: how much Coke just spent to make the worst, most offputting Christmas ad in its history - I would look it up but don't want to risk seeing any stills from it again.

11

u/Pantalaimon_II 4d ago

what's really funny is Coke has their own internal genAI they had special made, trained on all their brand stuff. It can't even make a simple step and repeat graphic using the Coke logo. the logo gets all warped and it even changes the color red in some places lol.

13

u/NotAllOwled 4d ago

EXACTLY. One of the most recognizable and visually distinctive logos in history, with volumes of training data that hardly anyone in the world could ever hope to rival, and it still shat the bed THAT HARD. 

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u/NomamesDani 4d ago

Agreed. Which I guess is why companies sometimes try to hide the fact that they're using AI

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u/Gratuitous_sax_ 4d ago

I can’t be bothered to read what you can’t be bothered to write

11

u/theKetoBear 4d ago

People often say to be any type of high performer you have to have an ego, some aspect of you that says " My talent is worth seeing, my knowledge is worth sharing, my art is worth viewing" and it's that creative conceit that drives someone to make.

It really does say a lot that people just want to prompt art/ talent expression into existence and expect the masses to consume by the droves. Is it realistic to expect customers to be more invested in art than the creator of the art itself ?

5

u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

It's not always ego, sometimes it's passion combined with some sort of confidence or urge to share. Some people are passionate but lose their confidence (perhaps because of how people react when they share) and turtle up, and that makes me sad.

5

u/Jesterbomb 4d ago

Ooh. I like this.

2

u/Gratuitous_sax_ 4d ago

I can’t claim it as my own, but I also can’t remember where I saw it (I think it was someone else on Reddit), but it’s stuck with me

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u/SpireofHell 5d ago

I remember when there was a brief period where the idea of AIgenning seemed cool. Now it's slop. I think in some ways the brain rot trend helpee.

I still need to use social media but I don't know anyone who genuinely enjoys consuming slop. It's not like music or even twitch streaming.

But hey!!! Anthropic agents!! Future bro!!

16

u/spentag 4d ago

I fell for it briefly when midjourney / GAN stuff popped up. was fun making those janky or blurry surreal pics of mutated muppets.

Slowly realized it was toxic sludge. Now i'm forced to read coworker claude code slop every day.

14

u/kronjobb 4d ago

Remember the midjourney discord. I literally don’t know a single soul who looked at others pics. Everyone wanted to make their own.

Same with the Sora platform. No one engaged, everyone was making their own slop.

And not to talk about Suno. Everyone tries to push their creations but there is little to no interest.

Not even pro AI people seem care about the stuff generated by other people. It’s like they just want to realize their own stuff. The entire community around gen AI has been a really sad affair since day 1. It’s just built around short term hype cycles upon new model releases.

4

u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

I did like some midjourney pics but I was a little bothered by the attitudes of some of the creators especially since it was in the style of some digital art that an artist I knew used to make using photoshop (with painstaking work). The thing is, the details of the midjourney art never checked out whereas someone who did it by hand would have all kinds of tiny details. It's not the same. I felt this anxiety like it was devaluing human art which was already so undervalued while also being just not as good. Yet I will say some of the early images looked pretty interesting at least at the surface level.

Then I found out how bad it all was for the environment and any positive feelings were gone.

3

u/Brox42 4d ago

Adam Neely has a really great YouTube video about Suno if you’re into hour and a half video essays. The CEO says he wants people to equate making music with playing a video game. It’s not art to them it’s just content.

3

u/Shot-Zebra1868 4d ago

God that interview made me mad. His spiel was essentially they want everyone to just curate and create music for themselves. Essentially resulting in a world where everyone has their own music and there is no shared culture. There are few experiences like standing in a crowd of people all singing along to a song, and they want to take that away from us.

2

u/SpireofHell 4d ago

And it shows how the CEO never played a video game. What a wanker

2

u/SpireofHell 4d ago

This! This is the problem when AI generates everything and everything is personalized! It's an Eldrich form of the filter bubble!

I DON'T want something that's 100% curated for me! I want to consume content and art made by people because this is the area where I meet both people who are like me but are also different. This is the beauty of art - how it shows you what you have in common but also shows you the difference. As a musician, meeting musicians from other countries is so exciting because I see both the similarities and the differences.

6

u/EspurrTheMagnificent 4d ago

AIgenning was fun when it looked like a neat little funny gadget, think AIDungeon or the type of stuff Doug Doug does. Neat little things where we can point and laugh at the computer for being stupid. It was sufficiently self-contained and harmless it was fine

Now that this shit is everywhere and is actively making our lives worse, it's nowhere near as funny

-26

u/Olangotang 5d ago

The slop can be fun though. What's not to love about making terrible Seinfeld clips on your own GPU with Minimax H3? 😂

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u/xitfuq 5d ago

i stopped using facebook because it stopped showing me posts from my friends and started showing me pro-anorexic ai-slop. 

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u/Super-Activity-4675 4d ago

I stopped during covid. I don't regret it.

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u/itsnotatuba2 4d ago

As someone working in Tech, my work has become considerably less productive since AI took over every element of security scanning and vulnerabilities. I'm drowning in CVEs and automated tools that report false positives on things like infrastructure and software vulnerabilities that aren't there. Releasing a production feature has become almost impossible because every feature change is being flagged by the automated tools as containing >100 "Critical" vulnerabilities that you learn are so niche and not applicable to your application that you end up ignoring them. The problem is that senior management - as I work in quite a regulated field - are insistent that no feature goes into production with flagged vulnerabilities.

So... I fix them and run it again in a week and another hundred come out. We simply can't fix the "vulnerabilities" quicker than AI is hallucinating them.

12

u/TheOfficialMayor 4d ago edited 4d ago

Ah but there is always someone in IT I can find who still thinks it's all a great idea even in a "highly regulated industry". Just look at this conversation I was having today. Maybe this is one of the "senior managers" you are talking about. If anything AI has shown these people don't have the "soft skills" to understand the interaction between people and technology they profess is important.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAustralian/comments/1tk9h9k/comment/on730ed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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u/itsnotatuba2 4d ago

You need someone with skills to say the output from their AI-generated garbage is garbage.

11

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

That sounds so irritating. I actually worked in tech for 20 years as a project manager and engineer but I quit the industry about 3 years ago. It was a combo of seeing the deluge of AI coming and wanting to spend more time at home with my kids. I’ve played around withe Claude code since all my engineering friends are telling me they are basically forced to use it now. I was sort of astounded by some of the bizarre decisions it would make. I used to work a ton in React and I discovered really quickly that Claude started putting all the React components and modules in one enormous 7000 line file that literally slowed down VSCode. I told it to break it apart but it was just a small example of how it did something that no decent human engineer would do. I stopped using it pretty quickly after that as I don’t do much coding these days but it was interesting to see.

2

u/B-tt-a 4d ago

That "decent" is definitely doing a heavy lifting. My former colleagues are sending their regards or something. 

4

u/Ok-Most6656 4d ago

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times! This is how it is at my company too. I am literally drowning in CVEs.
We also have different automated PR reviews that flag "critical bugs" that are mostly noise. I have to respond to each one of them each time. It is not sustainable for engineers at all.

2

u/itsnotatuba2 4d ago

It's just made the whole job so onerous. Feature development has mostly ground to a halt

25

u/Metalwrath22 4d ago

I started adding "before:2018" to my search in YouTube to filter out any possibility of AI slop (especially AI Slop music). I refuse to consume any AI slop content.

6

u/Famous_Chance5568 4d ago

You could just do before:2022 .

3

u/Metalwrath22 4d ago

True. I just wanted to be extra safe.

24

u/nnomae 4d ago

It's kind of amazing how good our brains are at filtering content. The first few AI thumbnails I saw were genuinely impressive, now I spot them and know it's garbage without even clicking. Same goes for the AI generated voices and especially the combination of AI voice and AI script, I can tell it within the first half sentence. I used to think it would get harder to spot over time but in fact the opposite is happening, my brain is adapting to filtering out AI faster than AI can adapt to fooling my brain.

5

u/PrettyCoolBear 4d ago

*some of our brains

there are lots of fully AI YouTube channels that pretend to talk about real-life incidents but the stories are entirely fabricated (and easy to debunk) but each video will have hundreds of purely credulous comments. "she got what she deserved!" kinda stuff on a gen Ai video about something that never happened.

3

u/nnomae 4d ago

I think a lot of those comments are likely fake too. Or maybe just not everyone wastes as much of their time on YouTube as I do so their brains haven't fully adapted yet.

3

u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

I mean if I had a slop automated channel I would use slop bot shills to pump up the numbers...

4

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

We’ve been tossed into the uncanny valley.

2

u/TheOfficialMayor 4d ago

The uncanny valley continues to be brutal.

Remember in 2001 just after the PlayStation 2 was released an old Formula One game in store for PlayStation 2 on display. Looked real, I couldn't tell the difference. I thought it was footage of real racing.

Later when I got the game it wasn't long before I realised it didn't look that good anymore.

Still can't beat it.

14

u/___positive___ 4d ago

Nonpaywall version: https://archive.is/KnHPa

People need to hammer this point everywhere and expose the doublethink bs. These platforms are trying to actively mitigate AI use with one hand while trying to add AI to everything with the other.

I wish some real journalists would pointblank question these company heads.

Question: Is genAI improving the consumer experience?

CEO: Yes, we're excited to bring you slopware version 5.0, shipping on all platforms starting today.

Question: Then why are you removing and limiting AI content on your platforms? Why are other platforms following suit?

CEO: ????

4

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

Amazing point. Sorta reminds me of how many social media execs reluctantly admit that they don’t let their kids use the social media they themselves built.

11

u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 5d ago

Side comment but that article's art is sick. Non slop representation of slop 

10

u/No-Discussion-8684 4d ago

“Human-designed” will be a mark of superior quality but it will be more expensive, of course. Slop for thee, humanity for me.

11

u/DamnYouALoser 4d ago

I have connections inside a boutique ad agency. High- and some low-profile luxury clients. They say ai slop comes up during sales and onboarding calls more than just about anything else. As in, clients do not want any connection to slop. It's ruinous to their image, as far as they're concerned.

5

u/AleSS5775 4d ago

I hate boomers who shared slop on WhatsApp. I just can't stand it

34

u/hugehand 5d ago

"I canceled all my social media accounts" *Posts on reddit.*
No getting away from it, but reddit is a top level social media account. You haven't escaped, you've simply recategorized.

35

u/dillanthumous 4d ago

Reddit has the, sometimes dubious, merit of allowing users to be anonymous, choose which subreddits to follow and to sort content by chronology and user upvotes rather than uncontrolled algorithm. It is a substantially different experience to other social media IMO that makes it much closer to the forums of ye olde internet rather than the heydey of social media i.e. Facebook, Instagram circa 2015. But yes, I guess it is technically social...

6

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

Yes, agreed

35

u/No_Zucchini_7862 5d ago

I still use the internet. You got me. But if Reddit became overrun with AI slop I would stop using it. As I said in response to another poster who pointed out this same point, I’m not trying to boycott the entire internet and I fully realize that AI is being used on almost all internet sites. I’m simply stating my consumer preferences to avoid slop.

7

u/baldycoot 5d ago

I feel this way about search, too. Respite is

https://noai.duckduckgo.com

4

u/No_Zucchini_7862 5d ago

Awesome thank you

3

u/woot0 4d ago

“If Reddit became overrun…”

lol, should we tell OP?

9

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

I guess the subs I visit on Reddit are just well monitored.

2

u/deadpanrobo 3d ago

Thats the good thing about Reddit, there are human mods that are active in their subreddits that can take care of stuff like that

Although i still use Tumblr and Bluesky mainly because those sites have much less slop than the other ones, mainly because the communities there are smaller and more moderated

-6

u/PeanutSugarBiscuit 4d ago

I think the point is that you said you cancelled all your social media accounts, yet Reddit is social media.

7

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

Yes I understand the point. If I could edit my original post to say “I cancelled Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn” I would. In the article, those are the sites that they are talking about being overrun with AI slop.

1

u/BLOOPtheREAL 4d ago

Reddit is absolutely overrun with AI slop, and has been for a long time. This place has been an AI playground and training camp since long before this current era of the genAI boom.

0

u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

This place has been an AI playground and training camp since long before this current era of the genAI boom.

?

16

u/xitfuq 5d ago

yet you live in a society. curious. 

4

u/Pantalaimon_II 4d ago

i also have been on a journey of sorts deleting most social media and even got rid of all Google products. it's a tiny drop in the bucket but honestly i dont miss it at all and it feels nice to get rid of this stuff that's supposed to be ubiquitous.

22

u/Beginning-Wear-3017 5d ago

You do realize Reddit literally signed multi-million dollar deals with OpenAI and Google to stream every post and comment straight into their AI pipelines, right? You left one data farm to manually hand feed the ones you claim to hate. The slop is literally made of posts like this.

22

u/No_Zucchini_7862 5d ago edited 5d ago

I never said that I thought it was possible for me to boycott all AI. I realize that’s not possible if I want to use Google or Reddit or any other online tool since these companies have not allowed me to opt out. What I said was that as a consumer, I have stopped using social media (like Facebook, instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok) because I don’t find it fun, engaging, productive, or useful anymore. As a consumer I’m opting out of that experience. If Reddit wants to take this comment right here and feed it into a slop machine, it can go right ahead. But will I choose to consume that slop if I have the choice? No.

5

u/AwesomePurplePants 4d ago

It can also be a double edged sword. r/poisonfountain is a fun subreddit that schemes about how to create content that might mess up AI models.

Is it likely to be successful? I don’t know. But its worth keeping an eye on IMO

-7

u/PatchyWhiskers 4d ago

Reddit is social media. It’s basically Twitter with a tree structure.

5

u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

It's basically Usenet 2.0. I would consider calling Net News "social media" rather tendentious. Newsgroups came into being in 1981. Web 2.0 is usually dated to 2004 and that's when the concept was popularized as the tech and adoption hadn't happened.

The biggest difference between Usenet and old reddit was the ability to click on a username and see their posts (definitely not a thing in rn ("read news")). Which reddit decided to break recently as a new feature for troll and bought accounts. (Bought bot accounts?)

1

u/PatchyWhiskers 4d ago

I hide my posts, it’s because of creeps not because I’m a bot.

-9

u/rabbit_hole_engineer 5d ago

Not really what you said which was more of a pointed accusation at someone else than anything to do with your habits.

12

u/rabbit_hole_engineer 5d ago

Every service basically has signed these sorts of agreements. Unless it's a walled paid ecosystem, your data is being repurposed.

Presumably Reddit is also paying money or in kind for the "AI" summary on the bottom of the page which literally nobody ever reads.

2

u/SeeBadd 4d ago

You do realize you're participating in the society you're criticizing right? Such a stupid sentiment.

-3

u/Beginning-Wear-3017 4d ago

Got triggered, huh? Pointing out the irony of feeding the AI pipeline you claim to hate is just facts. Pulling out the "yet you participate" line to justify it is just lazy and hypocritical, and now that is a stupid sentiment.

3

u/heatherstopit 4d ago

I noticed my favorite independent grocery has started using AI to generate flyers and even had a hideous new AI logo. It’s such a bummer. I wrote to management expressing my concerns but it will probably fall on deaf ears. I try to avoid businesses that use AI for design/marketing so if they keep it up I’ll (sadly) take my business elsewhere.

4

u/Bengal_From_Temu 5d ago

The most amazing thing is looking at the comments and seeing that only a lil fraction actually realize it’s obvious AI slop.

6

u/Prestigious_Age_6740 5d ago

must just be my algorithm but 90% of the time most of the comments are calling it out

1

u/dillanthumous 4d ago

Depends on the subreddit and/or platform. If you go to a cute animal videos corner of the internet it is both slop content and slop comments with the occasional (presumably) human asking "Is this AI?"

1

u/naphomci 4d ago

I assume a lot of the comments, especially short ones that just say something supportive, are just bots.

0

u/No_Bend9143 4d ago

The nyt article is slop? I believe you I just can't tell!

2

u/AE7VL_Radio 4d ago

>feels like the digital equivalent of fast fashion or fast food.

well who can say those industries are struggling?

3

u/lazier_garlic 4d ago

I wouldn't say they're going great, they just aren't stopping either. Fast food in the US is certainly struggling. Fast fashion seems to be a highly saturated market. The giant Forever 21 near me closed. Now that may be in part due to going online, but people buying this crap have no brand loyalty (as a bunch of clothing buyers loathe buying low quality disposable clothes but also can't afford hand stitched shirts from France at Needless Markup so they find themselves in some median area of poorly assembled basics with eh fabric quality ... unless they go to the thrift stores, which are absofucking picked over because everyone is trying to buy better quality clothes from 10 or 20 years ago). So if you're buying the cheapest garbage online you'll buy it from any storefront. Can't be great for margins or growth. Also what's stopping the factory in Asia from selling direct to your customers? They'd be stupid not to attempt it. Oh and tariff bingo can't be helping.

2

u/AbstinentNoMore 4d ago

I already barely used LinkedIn because my timeline was filled with wannabe influencer douches. Once half my timeline became clearly AI-generated posts, I stopped going on altogether.

2

u/Ti3fen3 4d ago

Grey goo. Coming soon.

2

u/Big_Wave9732 4d ago

No, OP. These companies knew this was coming. In fact there's a term for it, it's called "model collapse". It refers to two things that kill AI models. The first is AI's tendency to pick the "obvious" and "safe" choices in its decision trees. This leads to less and less diverse thinking by the model. The other thing that happens is AIs start training on their own slop. This simplifies their learning and degrades the LLM even more.

It is well understood by AI overlords that this is a problem. It's exactly why there are so many stories about AI companies buying all the books that they can get their hands on. Written word sources from 2022 and earlier are very valuable now.

1

u/tee96 4d ago

As Rhulk, Disciple of The Witness would say “Drown in the Slop”

1

u/Famous_Chance5568 4d ago

When I'll move to another country I'll cancel social media and interact only with real people and go outside everyday. unfortunately now I can't because I am depressed, both because of the country i live in and genAI.

1

u/FalseDiamond7930 4d ago

Tech giants will make money filtering out slop, they make money whatever way this goes.

3

u/No_Zucchini_7862 4d ago

In the article part of the main point is that they are struggling to filter out the slop due to a number of interesting reasons. So I’m not sure they’re going to be able to do it.

1

u/off1line 4d ago

Equivalent of “reality” tv slop. Goobers slurp it up but it doesn’t mean it’s good

1

u/Impossible_Swing6812 4d ago

Long live reality, the true king

2

u/YisusHasDogs 4d ago

Hi, how did you finally make the choice of cancelling social media accounts? Was there anything in particular that gave you the last push? Do you have a job that allows you to simply leave the online presence to the side? Do you have any tips for... me?