In my opinion, AI Slop is content made with AI that is low effort. People feel and know the quality of something, and if it feels like slop, it feels like slop.
AI being used is not a deal breaker for me as long as the product is good. AI isn’t magic and it takes skills and knowledge to use it and to judge what the model outputs.
You may see it differently however, some might believe that the use of any AI tools whatsoever turns any app into slop the moment the first commit with AI code in it is made.
What do you think, what does AI Slop mean to you?
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anything made with AI, specially if it’s undisclosed. i give an exception for AI narration (text to speech AI) but i still don’t like it if it’s not disclosed as AI generated, i’d rather hear a person.
I think the AI narration gives me the most unreasonably negative feelings. Especially since it’s usually the same couple voices used over and over, I just cringe when I hear them, and automatically assume that none of what they are saying can be trusted.
Narration for the blind or visually impaired is always a good idea. A.I. narration can help with that. Most of the A.I. narration slop is also A.I. writing, which is why they have terrible grammar and sentence structure.
Paying $15,000.00 for an internet connected math calculator that may, or may not, give you the correct answer. Where a $20.00 math calculator is right every single time, and needs no connectivity.
I’d put the distinction around the same place as the distiction is between copyright infringement and transformative work. At a certain point, the AI output becomes less of a “piece” of the work and more of an ingredient unrecognizably blended, with a similar amount of care to any other element. For example, if a Vending machine asset is generated by AI, its slop. Add flavour text to it, and its still slop. Replace all the contents with theme-approprate contents, and and clean up the topology, and it finally starts to become distinct enough to (potentially) not be slop. Basically, it needs to be distinct enough to have a unique, human author and/or no longer fill the original “”“role”“”.
content made with AI that is low effort.
That’s the funny part. It’s all low effort!
Remember clipart and wordart? It was colourful and flashy and easy, and everywhere in PowerPoint presentations and word documents and even online. For a few years. Then it vanished.
Turns out, easy and flashy doesn’t have a lot of staying power because when something is easy, it is ubiquitous, and when it is ubiquitous it stops being impressive.
AI slop is easy and flashy, and will probably run its course as people become tired of it.
There will still exist AI content, but it will not resemble the slop we see today.
I have less hate for AI than the general population of Lemmy but I’m certainly not a fan.
To me, AI slop is a random schmuck typing in “make an image of two people laughing together” and then takes the first result (riddled with errors) and posts it to their blog, article, or social media to supplement whatever story they are telling or point they are trying to make.
If the image has purpose, or a good concept, then I might give it some credit. If they creator has a great idea or joke, and they do not have the ability to draw it themselves, I’m not opposed to them using AI to help create their vision.
For example, my dad really enjoyed Far Side comics and often he would come up with his own, but he can’t draw, so he would just have to explain to us what the picture would look like and what the caption would be. If he used AI to create these visions of his, It’s probably the only way that he could share his jokes with the world. And it’s not like he’s taking money from an artist who needs work, because he’d never pay to have them professionally created. If he can’t share them, they will die with him.
If it’s a tool to help you effectively tell your story, I’m ok with it. But if you’re just cranking out fake doorbell videos and implying they are real, for hits on social, GTFO.
I call it slop when it was generated by AI and not carefully reviewed (and probably tweaked) by a human that understands the output.
Code written not by a software developer? Slop.
Code written by a software developer that just shipped it without understanding it? Slop.
Code written by a software developer that went through subsequent review, testing, and adjustment? “AI-assisted”, maybe?
Replace code with any other industry and the same principle applies.
I generally equate slop with human laziness, even though the actual “quality” of the slop still varies.
If it does something helpful to me at low risk and doesn’t soften my skills, then it’s just another tool. If some trys to sell me or give me AI content, then I can’t trust them and they are the enemy.
AI slop is content geared toward metrics in an algorithm. AI is helpless and must produce content averaged out by the metrics of whatever company designed the thing. But humans are perfectly capable of producing slop.
For example, a director working for Apple wanted to nerd out on the opening sequence to pay tribute to an obscure movie he liked. Apple said no. Their data showed that audiences needed to be captivated in the first 30seconds or they’d switch off. So how about a drone-shot over a European city with a song that cost a fortune to licence, and with a voice over explaining everything? All the slop, none of the AI.
something made with “ai” that’s shitty enough to make me notice and cringe
Content (images, audio, text…) generated by GenAI. It’s slop not quality-wise, but because it’s mass-produced (as opposed to artisanal creations).
Not all slop is AI-generated, though - we had mass-produced content before GenAI, too. GenAI is just turning it up to eleven.
I think the word ‘slop’ has really been overused at this point. It’s dead to me.
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Yeah. Basically ai has made things easy enough to do crappily that a lot of crap is created. People who would have to think for a while and spend time writing a paragraph can get one written from a one sentence prompt. they can create a story from a paragpraph. similarly if they had no art talent they might try some stuff but even to make a crappy thing it would take time and effort. Honestly like I got sick of memes because they are low effort so I stay away from them. That was because photoshop made it easy to make these simple little cartoon type things. ai creations are like that. someone using llms in their work is no different from using google search when they work on something but if someone took the first link from the first search and copy and pasted it like it was some great thing it would be quite annoying.
When it is in any way (as of now, mostly linguistically, visually or audibly) obvious that the creation of a certain piece of content was automatized and there is subjectively perceivable noise in the content and the content is presented to a wider audience by an entity that is more or less influential and the vast majority of its recipients seemingly consume the noise-riddled content with more or less satisfaction without apparent afterthought or meditation on the lack of factual or artistic authenticity, integrity and craftsmanship. Noise, here, is the subjectively perceivable shortcomings of the content, such as unintended repetitiveness, disfiguration, distortion, simplification, loss of detail and resolution and the likes. This is slop and this is degeneration.
