The Politics Of 'AI Slop'

Even if you don’t know what “AI slop” is, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered it basically everywhere you spend time online. Maybe it was those Facebook photos of an LA firefighter rescuing a baby and a bear cub during the wildfires earlier this year. Or it’s in emails from your MAGA aunt with an inspirational story she found online about a group of bikers with a suspicious number of fingers visiting a World War Two veteran in the hospital. Or it’s the President of the United States sharing AI-generated videos depicting the head of the Office of Management and Budget as the Grim Reaper or putting sombreros on House Minority Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. And with the latest version of OpenAI’s Sora app, it’s only going to get harder to know what’s fake — which is bad, because AI imagery is becoming inescapable in our social media feeds and our politics. So to talk more about what AI slop is, why it’s so profitable, and why we won’t be rid of it anytime soon, we spoke with Jason Koebl...