AI slop
What is AI slop?
What forms can AI slop take?
What concerns do critics have about AI slop?
AI slop is a colloquial term for low-quality media content, including images, video, audio, and text, generated by artificial intelligence (AI) with seemingly little effort from a human interlocutor. It may refer to content created to mislead or influence users, such as false news reports and propaganda; to earn revenue, such as AI-generated e-books or music tracks posted to streaming platforms; or to entertain, such as absurdist social media videos. In 2025 Merriam-Webster named slop its word of the year, noting that its choice “sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”
The many forms of AI slop
The word slop has long been used to describe not only the food waste and other contents in a pig trough but also products of little to no value. On the Internet, “slop” has been used to describe low-effort online or in-person experiences since at least 2019. Based on these definitions of the term, livestreams in which a host reacts to another poster’s content rather than producing something original, YouTube videos that users play only for background noise, and clickbait headlines designed to make readers click on a link regardless of actual value could all fall into the category of online “slop.”
AI slop, meanwhile, can refer to multiple forms of AI-generated content, including:
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- Absurdist, comedic videos created for children
- Incorrect or incomplete AI-generated search results
- Purposeful misrepresentations of news, politics, or current events
- Works of music, art, or literature generated by AI in order to be sold for a profit
Some critics worry that AI slop will contribute to online misinformation. For example, early versions of Google’s generative AI Overview feature, which debuted in 2024, often provided incorrect answers to user queries. In 2025 The New York Times reported one AI Overview claim “that Andrew Johnson, who became president in 1865 and died in 1875, earned 13 college degrees between 1947 and 2012.” Other AI-generated Google responses—including those offering home remedies for serious medical conditions such as appendicitis and suggesting the use of glue to stop cheese from sliding off pizza—were so absurd and ill-advised that critics compiled them into lists, deeming them “cringeworthy.”
AI-generated content created for political purposes spawned another new term: slopaganda. This type of content included online propaganda campaigns with ties to national governments and even memes, videos, and images posted by political leaders, such as AI-generated content shared by U.S. Pres. Donald Trump on his and the White House’s official social media accounts. The 2026 Iran war, a conflict centered on Iran that was initiated by the United States and Israel, also provided fodder for AI slop and slopaganda. Namely, one media company in Iran produced a series of viral LEGO-style pro-Iran videos and claimed that the AI-generated content had been commissioned by the Iranian government.
AI slop created purely for entertainment is also not without its critics. “Whatever the intent of its creators,” wrote Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik in 2025, “this torrent of AI content leads to the desensitisation and overwhelming of visual palates.…The result is profound disorientation.”
AI slop and brain rot
AI slop overlaps with the trend of social media “brain rot,” which refers to absurdist online content popular on platforms including TikTok and Roblox. Brain rot can describe any mindless digital content and users’ fixation on it, although it is not necessarily AI-generated. Popular brain rot trends of the 2020s included Skibidi Toilet, a series of human-designed animated videos featuring toilets with human heads popping out of the bowls, and the practice of pairing custom narration or scenes from television shows with footage from the mobile game Subway Surfers.
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A subgenre of specifically AI-generated brain rot content, however, went viral on TikTok in 2025—most notably “Italian brain rot,” a meme trend characterized by absurdist AI-generated characters (many of whose videos are paired with Italian narration).
The who’s who of Italian brain rot
Not all Italian brain rot is Italian. The character of Tung Tung Tung Sahur, an anthropomorphic kentongan (a Javanese slit drum that is struck with a wooden club) holding a baseball bat, is paired with Indonesian narration.
- Ballerina Cappuccina: A graceful ballerina’s body sports a coffee cup, complete with human facial features, for a head.
