YouTube Isn't Fighting AI Slop. It's Betting on It

'Sloppification' looks set to help the video-sharing site become the world's largest media company.

- Parmy Olson

There's a prevailing wisdom that content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), or slop as it's colloquially known, should make our skin crawl. AI models tend to generate uncanny faces, mangled hands and fantastical scenarios.

Take the YouTube Shorts video of a baby that finds itself being shimmied up a baggage loader onto a jumbo jet, before donning an aviation headset and flying the plane. It has racked up more than 103 million views.

So, too, have other AI-generated videos, which are starting to dominate the platform in much the same way they've proliferated across Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

Several of YouTube's most popular channels now feature AI-generated content heavily.

I'd originally thought this would be a problem for YouTube as it grappled with what looked like a new form of spam, but the general lack of complaint from advertisers coupled with the gangbusters growth of AI content, and even appreciative comments from viewers, changed my view.

It seems the public is happy to gorge on slop, and that's not a problem for Alphabet's most valuable asset after Google Search. Quite the opposite.

Earlier in July, YouTube—which could surpass The Walt Disney Company in 2025 as the world's largest media company by revenue—updated its policies to strike a balance between allowing AI-generated videos to flourish on its platform without spamming it.