Drowning in Slop: AI Garbage Is Clogging the Internet, and It's Getting Worse
AI-generated content, termed "slop," is overwhelming the internet, degrading information quality across sectors like fiction, social media, and academia, raising concerns about trust and human creativity's marginalization.
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The rise of AI-generated content, referred to as "slop," is increasingly overwhelming the internet, leading to a proliferation of low-quality, incoherent material. This phenomenon first became apparent in late 2022 when Neil Clarke, founder of the speculative fiction magazine Clarkesworld, noticed a surge in submissions that were clearly AI-generated, often following bizarre and formulaic narratives. The influx of such content has made it difficult for platforms to manage submissions, with legitimate works being drowned out by AI-generated noise. This issue extends beyond fiction, affecting social media, music streaming, and even academic publications, where AI-generated works are now commonplace. The concern is that as AI continues to produce this "slop," it could degrade the quality of information available online, leading to a collapse of trust in digital content. Libraries and educational institutions are also at risk, as they may inadvertently distribute unverified AI-generated materials. Despite attempts to filter out this content, the problem persists, fueled by a gray market of spammers and entrepreneurs exploiting generative AI for profit. The situation raises alarms about the future of online information and the potential for AI to dominate content creation, leaving human creativity marginalized.
- The term "slop" refers to low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet.
- Clarkesworld magazine temporarily closed submissions due to overwhelming AI-generated stories.
- AI-generated content is affecting various sectors, including social media, music, and academia.
- Concerns are growing about the degradation of information quality and trust online.
- The rise of slop is driven by a gray market of spammers exploiting generative AI for profit.
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Drowning in Slop. It's clogging the internet with AI garbage
AI-generated content, termed "slop," is overwhelming the internet, leading to low-quality submissions, particularly in publishing and academia, while a gray market exploits this trend, threatening information integrity.
6 commentsForget the hype. The real achievement of AI will be to destroy the internet, at least the Wikipedia-esqe mode of pseudonymous online collaboration producing serviceable and easily-accessible knowledge at a low price. Silicon Valley will destroy its most successful creation.
If we're lucky, we'll return to reprise of a pre-1995 information ecosystem, run by very offline in-person contacts where personal reputation keeps the slop in check.
That means anything outside of corporate produced/curated/edited. Social media, youtube, blogs, podcasts, music, video, text.
I think this will mean in-person interactions, performance, classic books, classic music will all become more popular as modern AI slop fundamentally undermines the trust people have with anything delivered over a computer.
AI content is a lie. A deep, insidious, uncanny valley lie. It is a computer program pretending to be human in a fundamentally disingenuous way. The AI mafia want you to accept this as not a deception, because that is the path to their profit.
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