In the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man\u2019s shrimp Jesus is another man\u2019s side hustle.<\/p>\n
AI slop \u2013 the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views \u2013 is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Merriam-Webster\u2019s word of the year<\/a> this year is \u201cslop\u201d, referring exclusively to the internet variety.<\/p>\n It came about shortly after the advent of popular large language models, such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, which democratised content creation and enabled vast swathes of internet denizens to create images and videos that resembled \u2013 to varying degrees \u2013 the creations of professionals.<\/p>\n In 2024, it began to achieve peak cultural moments. Notable among these was shrimp Jesus<\/a>, a viral trend in which Facebook was briefly flooded with AI-generated images of the deity fused with crustaceans. Shrimp Jesus was quickly followed by hallmarks of the AI slop genre: videos of old women<\/a> claiming to celebrate their 122nd birthday, and mini soap operas<\/a> about the dramatic lives of cats.<\/p>\n In 2025, the flood continued, growing more uncanny and more explicitly copyright-violating. This spring saw the advent of Ghiblification \u2013 that is, a trend in which users from Nayib Bukele<\/a> to the White House rendered images<\/a>, including of deportations, in the style of Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s Studio Ghibli<\/a>. This particular moment was enabled by OpenAI\u2019s release of an image generator powered by GPT-4o; Sam Altman, OpenAI\u2019s chief executive, jumped on the trend by Ghiblifying his X profile and writing the rather remarkable post<\/a>:<\/p>\n >be me \u2014 Sam Altman (@sama) March 26, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n Miyazaki, the chief architect of Studio Ghibli\u2019s distinctive, hand-drawn animation style, has elsewhere said<\/a>, on the subject of artificial intelligence: \u201cI would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel this is an insult to life itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Other AI slop moments followed: a spate of videos of AI-generated obese people participating in the Olympics, pressure cookers exploding, more cats. Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, the leader of the military junta in Burkina Faso, became the centrepiece of an AI slop cult featuring videos of Justin Bieber singing<\/a> on the streets of Ouagadougou.<\/p>\n In some ways, AI slop has improved. Gone \u2013 mostly \u2013 are the days of six-fingered hands and missing limbs that characterised the output of early image generators. In some ways, though, AI slop has hardly changed at all. It is still uncanny and contextless, still aimed directly at the amygdala, still chasing virality by virtue of having the lowest barriers to entry imaginable: no plot, no exposition, surreal imagery and cats, cats, cats.<\/p>\n Describing this flood of unreality as solely a technological phenomenon misses one of the main drivers of AI slop. In one view it is the endpoint of an algorithmically determined internet optimised for engagement and turbocharged with new, powerful tools. It won\u2019t change as long as the platforms and their algorithms don\u2019t.<\/p>\n But it is also the product of an underlying global economy \u2013 one that is everywhere, increasingly dependent on a few powerful technology companies and a few powerful platforms, one which appears to offer dwindling returns for real work, but lavish fortunes for the lucky, viral few.<\/p>\n AI slop creator is, after all, a profession. They come from everywhere \u2013 from the US to India to Kenya to Ukraine. In some ways, it can be argued that AI tools have enabled a strange globalisation of content, says Arsenii Alenichev, who studies the production of images in global health. Earlier this year, Alenichev noticed a flood of \u201cAI poverty porn\u201d on major stock photo sites. Many of the creators of the images, he said, appeared to have eastern European usernames.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if these are just artists that are trying to generate extreme images of everything, hoping that someone would buy them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Making it in AI slop isn\u2019t easy. Oleksandr, an AI YouTube<\/a> creator based in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, estimates that only the top 5% of creators ever monetise a video, and only 1% make a living from it.<\/p>\n
>grind for a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever
>mostly no one cares for first 7.5 years, then for 2.5 years everyone hates you for everything
>wake up one day to hundreds of messages: “look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha”<\/p>\n