The AI slop online is drowning democracy

People who pay can find quality information, but others suffer as artificial content takes over.

- JASON MIKLIAN AND KRISTIAN HOELSCHER GUEST CONTRIBUTORS

AD-BACKED, free portions of the internet are flooded with low-quality AI-generated content.

(CHRIS MCGRATH Getty Images)

PRINCESS DIANA stumbling through a parkour park. Team USA taking gold at the Bong Olympics. Tank Man breakdancing in Tiananmen Square. Kurt Cobain playing pogs. Tupac Shakur seeking poutine in Costco. OpenAI's Sora 2 artificial intelligence video generator debuted this month, and the internet's mind-benders pounced upon it. Hilarious and harmless? Or a symbol of how we are kissing reality goodbye, entering an age where nobody can ever trust video again?

It's the latest example of how AI is transforming the world. But the problem goes deeper than just creating energy-sucking brainrots; it's becoming a major threat to democracy itself. Billions of people today experience the internet not through high-quality news and information portals but on algorithmically generated clickbait, misinformation and nonsense.

This phenomenon forms the "slop economy": a second-tier internet where those who don't pay for content are inundated with low-quality, ad-optimized sludge. Platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and YouTube are filled with maximal content at minimal cost churned out by algorithmic scraping and remixing bits of human-written material into a synthetic slurry. Bots are creating and spreading countless fake author clickbait blogs, how-to guides, political memes and get-rich-quick videos.