Théodore remembers the AI slop that tipped him over the edge.
The image was of two emaciated, impoverished South Asian children. For some reason, despite their boyish features they have thick beards. One of them had no hands and only one foot. The other was holding a sign saying it’s his birthday and asking for likes.
Inexplicably they are sitting in the middle of a busy road in the pouring rain with a birthday cake. The image is full of tell-tale signs that it was made with AI. But on Facebook it went viral with nearly one million likes and heart emojis.
Something snapped in Théodore.
“It boggled my mind. The absurd AI made images were all over Facebook and getting [a] huge amount of traction without any scrutiny at all – it was insane to me,” says the 20-year-old student from Paris.
So Théodore started an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, called “Insane AI Slop” and started calling out and poking fun at the content he came across that was fooling people. Others took notice and his inbox soon became flooded with people sending submissions for popular so-called AI slop.
Common themes started becoming apparent – religion, military or poor children doing heartwarming things.
“Kids in the third world doing impressive stuff is always popular – like a poor kid in Africa making an insane statue out of trash. I think people find it wholesome so the creators think, ‘Great, let’s make more of this stuff up,’” Théodore says.
Théodore’s account soon swelled to over 133,000 followers.
The onslaught of AI slop – which he defines as fake, unconvincing videos and pictures, made quickly – is now unstoppable. Tech companies have embraced AI. Some of the firms say they are starting to crack down on some forms of AI ‘slop’ – though many social media feeds still appear to be full of the content.
Over just a couple of years, the experience of using social media has changed profoundly. How did it happen, and what effect will it have on society?
And, perhaps most pressingly of all, how much do the billions of social media users actually care?
In October, during another jubilant earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg happily declared that social media had entered a third phase, which is now centred around AI.
“First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly.
“The second was when we added all of the creator content. Now as AI makes it easier to create and remix content, we’re going to add yet another huge corpus of content,” he told shareholders.
Meta, which runs social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is not only allowing people to post AI generated content – it’s launched products to enable more of it to be made. Image and video generators and increasingly powerful filters are now being offered across the board.
When approached for comment, Meta pointed the BBC to January’s earnings call. In that call, the billionaire said the firm was leaning even more into AI, and made no mention of any clampdown on slop.
“Soon we’ll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI,” Zuckerberg said.
YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, wrote in his 2026 look-ahead blog that in December alone more than one million YouTube channels used the platform’s AI tools to make content.
“Just as the synthesizer, Photoshop and CGI revolutionized sound and visuals, AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in,” he wrote.
The CEO also acknowledged that there are growing concerns about “low-quality content, aka AI slop”. He said his team is working on ways to improve systems to find and remove “low quality, repetitive content”.
But he also ruled out making any judgements on what should and shouldn’t be allowed to flourish. He pointed out that once-niche content like ASMR (soothing sounds designed to make your scalp tingle) and live video game-playing is now mainstream.
According to research from AI company Kapwing, 20% of content shown to a freshly opened YouTube account is now “low-quality AI video”.
Short-form video in particular was a hotspot, with Kapwing finding it featured in 104 of the first 500 YouTube Shorts clips shown to a new account created by the researchers.
The creator economy seems to be a big driver as people and channels can earn money from engagement and views. Judging by the views on some AI channels and videos, people are indeed drawn to the content – or the algorithms that dictate what we see are, anyway.
According to Kapwing, the AI slop channel with the most views is India’s Bandar Apna Dost, which has 2.07 billion views, netting the creators an estimated annual earnings of $4m (£2.9 million).
But there is something of a backlash taking place too.
Under many viral AI videos, it’s now common to see a furious flurry of comments decrying the content. (BBC)
