AI slop squeezes creators, testing trust in platforms

Even as original video and audio content struggle for attention in a crowded digital ecosystem, a new threat is compounding the problem: a surge of low-cost, artificial intelligence (AI)-generated material that is reshaping discovery, monetization and trust across platforms.

- Latajha [e-mail]

Often dubbed "AI slop", this content is mass-produced, repetitive and generic. REUTERS

Often dubbed “AI slop”, this content is mass-produced, repetitive and generic, flooding feeds and pushing higher-quality work out of view.

For creators, the immediate hit is visibility: strong content gets buried under volume, making consistent engagement and monetization harder to sustain in a market where revenue is already concentrated among a small fraction of players.

One common manifestation of AI-generated content is the proliferation of cover versions of popular songs, often created and distributed at scale using AI tools.

For instance, the music of last year’s romantic hit Saiyaara saw multiple such renditions, including AI-generated versions.

A recent Deloitte report underscores the broader shift: over 92% of content in India now use generative AI tools, sharply lowering the cost and time required to produce content.

For platforms, the bigger risk is trust.

Industry experts say that once users suspect content is AI-generated, engagement drops—they sense the inauthenticity even if they can’t always name it. As AI slop becomes easier to spot, that trust penalty is beginning to play out at scale.