An AI slop on the Internet earns its creators millions of dollars. What you need to know

Artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to the phenomenon of AI-slop on the Internet — absurd and low-quality publications on social networks. They get a huge number of views, and their authors get as many subscribers as the creators of the original content. AI-slop generation requires minimal costs and is capable of generating impressive revenues. How this market works and what it is criticized for is in the Izvestia article.

What is an AI-slop?

• The development of services using artificial intelligence (AI) to create images, videos, and music has led to the emergence of such a specific phenomenon as AI-slop. Usually, this word, which translates from English as "slop," refers to low-quality or meaningless content produced using neural networks for profit. The term came into use in 2024, and the following year it was recognized by many dictionaries as the word of the year. It has a derogatory intonation similar to the word "spam".

• AI-slop includes various videos and pictures that try to put emotional pressure on the user and cause him to react in the form of a like, comment or repost. This allows publications to gain popularity, and their authors to increase their reach among the audience and earn income from its monetization. At the same time, the use of artificial intelligence scales and speeds up the content creation process. Previously, in order to gain popularity on social networks, it was necessary to stand out for your creative approach and invest a lot of money in creating content, but with the development of AI, this has ceased to play such an important role.

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• The speed and accessibility of the services that generate the AI slop has led to its rapid simplification to extremely absurd and even frightening forms. The main features of AI-slop are its isolation from reality, questionable quality, and focus on a mass audience. An example of a typical AI slop is the videos of a grandmother walking a hippo on the Internet. Despite their apparent implausibility, such images evoke a lively reaction from users of social networks.

What is AI-slop criticized for?

• The AI slop that has rapidly burst into everyday life usually causes a negative reaction from Internet users. Many people are annoyed by the abundance of artificially generated photos and videos that confuse and substitute for more meaningful content, as well as mislead, replacing reality. The authors of such publications are criticized for their lack of talent and desire to do something of high quality that would really be worth paying attention to. Claims often relate to the glaring errors that neural networks make when generating content.

• In cases where AI is no longer used by ordinary users, but by companies, the discontent is even stronger. In 2024, Coca-Cola's Christmas commercial, shot using AI, was criticized. Social media users were outraged that, instead of attracting real actors and artists, a neural network was used to create the video, which even misspelled the company's name in one of the episodes.

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• AI-slop has also found application in politics, which also causes active controversy. With the help of artificial intelligence, it has become possible to quickly and inexpensively create emotionally charged but untested content that affects not only user sentiment, but also their political position. Sometimes even US President Donald Trump publishes an AI slop, thus provoking both criticism and reciprocal support. The videos he published about the Gaza Strip and former US President Barack Obama, represented as a monkey, caused a lot of discussion.

• At the same time, there is an alternative opinion about AI-slop, according to which it should be considered as a cost of mass culture, which has only taken on a new form for itself. In this case, AI-slop can be compared with any other mediocre art samples. Universally recognized masterpieces of painting or cinema are overshadowed by many passing and frankly bad paintings and films made by both amateurs and professionals. However, second-rate works of art do not receive such a negative reaction and discussion as an AI-slop, which theoretically could be accepted by the audience if it met certain quality criteria.

How much money does the AI slop bring?

• Whatever the attitude towards AI-slop, it turned out to be economically beneficial for its authors. It doesn't take a lot of money to create it, it spreads quickly on social networks and video hosting sites, and any reaction to it, including negative ones, increases audience engagement. At the same time, the creation of an AI slot is easy to automate and put on stream.

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• According to research conducted at the end of 2025, of the 15,000 most popular YouTube channels worldwide, 278 contain content created exclusively using artificial intelligence. Together, they gain 63 billion views and have 221 million subscribers. This suggests that the AI slot market on YouTube reaches a volume of $117 million per year. At the same time, among the channels of the video platform that are gaining popularity the fastest, one in ten offers users exclusively an AI slot. The experiment showed that in the recommendations for new users, every fifth video clip will also be artificially generated.

• Although it is beneficial for online services to provide a platform for AI-slop, it has been subject to restrictions lately. YouTube CEO Neil Mohan has promised that his video platform will deal with an overabundance of repetitive and low-quality content created by neural networks. At the beginning of 2026, several of the most popular AI-sloping channels were closed, and videos violating the rules were removed from some of them. However, given how easy and cheap it is to create a new AI slot, this phenomenon will continue to exist in the Internet environment.