ai slop

ai slop isn’t anything new. it has happened before. it’s ubiquitous now. hand made shoes vs factory made. prepackaged food vs home-cooked. it’s just a new type of content that is able to reach the masses better.

it’s quite endearingly human. once a lot us enjoy one thing, we’ll start figuring out ways to make it faster and then cheaper. the high level behaviors that we’ll see play out in the future will be the same as when factories started pumping out xiaolongbaos. “it’s not too bad!” “I actually like it better (hot take)”

the reason why it feels terrible (for now) is because its not competing against other human made products for our dollar. slop competes for our time and we are massively aware of that. it’s easier to answer “how much money do you have right now” than “how much time do you have left right now”; so, we view our time as extremely valuable, priceless even: bc we don’t know how much we have. Such a valuable resource surely shouldn’t be wasted on content that is lazy.

but lazy content that uses shortcuts is nothing new. CGI, stencils, pre-recorded audience laughs. the difference is that right now its in our face. when it doesn’t meet the expectation of the human eye, the “ai” part of it becomes the main character, and the whole thing feels deceptive. it’s “obvious” because it’s done badly.

but bad content is also nothing new. a kids drawing in a museum stands out like a sore thumb. an amateur magician drops his cards and immediately breaks immersion. we critique. they improve.

done well, a good painting encourages its audience to move beyond their separate senses and interpret deeper messages. done well, a card trick feels magical. done well, ai content will also do the same.

or will it?

what our minds are having trouble grappling with is, there are typically two types of content, or any creation really: purposeful and unintentional. the purposeful content typically, we assume, takes longer to create, while the unintentional, we assume, takes no time. we appreciate content that looks like it took a lot of effort to make, and ended up being amazing. we also appreciate fleeting moments that were captured without effort and intention. if you later learn that an amazing movie took one day to film, you’d probably like it less. if you later learn that a hilarious moment was staged, it’s less funny.

the problem with ai content is that it fits in none of these buckets. it takes (relatively) minimal effort, and it’s always intentional. that’s why the math doesn’t add up. for now at least. mass produced products will find their homes eventually. maybe it’s when time is less valuable or paid attention to. maybe it’s where humans despise visiting. maybe it’s when the output is used elsewhere and not the final product.