AI 'Slop' Floods YouTube: Low-Quality Content Dominates Fast-Growing Channels
The digital landscape of YouTube is undergoing a surreal transformation, with an unsettling surge of artificial intelligence-generated video content. From feline melodramas to infants adrift in the cosmos, these bizarre productions are rapidly colonizing the platform, signaling a new era of AI-driven media.
A recent analysis of data from analytics firm Playboard, conducted by The Guardian, reveals the startling scale of this phenomenon: nearly one in ten of the fastest-growing YouTube channels globally are now exclusively featuring AI-generated content. In July alone, out of the top 100 rapidly expanding channels, nine were found to be purely AI-driven. These offerings range from fantastical narratives like a baby crawling into a pre-launch space rocket, to an undead Cristiano Ronaldo, and melodramas featuring humanized cats. This explosion in AI video generation has been fueled by the release of powerful new tools such as Google’s Veo 3 and Elon Musk’s Grok Imagine.
Collectively, these channels command millions of subscribers. The channel featuring the space-stranded infant, for instance, boasts 1.6 million subscribers, while “Super Cat League,” a channel depicting human-like cats engaged in affairs and even dismembering an eagle, has garnered 3.9 million subscribers. Other channels on the fastest-growing list include “Cuentos Facinantes” with 4.8 million subscribers, “MIRANHAINSANO” at 4.9 million, “AmyyRoblox” with 2.4 million, and “Starway” at 2.8 million. One channel, “বজল মিয়া 767k,” which had attracted 2 million subscribers, has since been closed.
Much of this content falls under the umbrella term “AI slop,” characterized by its low quality, mass-produced nature, and often surreal, uncanny, or grotesque aesthetics. While some of these videos exhibit rudimentary plots, hinting at the evolving sophistication of AI-generated narratives, their primary characteristic remains their artificial and often nonsensical origin.
YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company, has attempted to stem this deluge by blocking the sharing of advertising revenue with channels that post repetitive and “inauthentic” content—a policy directly targeting AI-generated material. A spokesperson for YouTube affirmed that all content, regardless of its generation method, is subject to its community guidelines. Following inquiries from The Guardian regarding several channels, including those on the fastest-growing lists for June and July, YouTube confirmed it had removed three channels from its platform and blocked two others from receiving advertising income, though specific channels were not identified.
Experts view this proliferation of AI-generated video as a harbinger of the next wave of internet “enshittification”—a term coined by British-Canadian author Cory Doctorow in 2022 to describe the decline in the quality of online user experiences as platforms increasingly prioritize profit over offering high-quality content. Dr. Akhil Bhardwaj, an associate professor at the University of Bath’s school of management, asserts that “AI slop is flooding the internet with content that essentially is garbage.” He argues that this “enshittification” is detrimental to online communities, competes with human artists for revenue, and degrades the overall content quality on platforms like YouTube. Dr. Bhardwaj suggests that a crucial step for social media companies is to prevent the monetization of AI slop, thereby removing the incentive for its creation.
Ryan Broderick, author of the popular internet culture newsletter Garbage Day, has been particularly critical, recently describing YouTube as a “dumping ground for disturbing, soulless AI shorts.” The spread of AI content is not limited to YouTube; Instagram’s Reels feature is also inundated with it, exemplified by a video featuring celebrity heads attached to animal bodies, which garnered 3.7 million views. On TikTok, numerous AI-generated videos have gone viral, including an AI Abraham Lincoln vlogging his ill-fated trip to the opera and cats competing in an Olympic diving event. However, some of these TikTok examples, like the Lincoln and cat Olympic videos, are seen as more aligned with the internet’s pre-slop era of playful wit rather than pure generative garbage. Both Instagram and TikTok have stated that they require all realistic AI content to be labeled and are cross-checking suspicious videos with deepfake detection services like Reality Defender.
As AI video generation tools become more accessible and powerful, the digital landscape faces the challenge of distinguishing genuine creativity from an ever-growing tide of artificial, low-quality content.