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Amy Sawyama
Amy Sawyama

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Spam, junk, slop. The latest wave of AI behind the ‘zombie internet’

"Slop" is the latest term for AI-generated web content that is low quality, misleading, and often incorrect. Coined by developer Simon Willison, slop clutters the internet with non-interactive AI-generated material aimed at generating ad revenue and manipulating search engine rankings. Users must wade through this content, which includes erroneous travel recommendations, misleading foraging guides, and bizarre AI-generated images on social media.

The proliferation of slop, described by tech journalist Jason Koebler as contributing to a "zombie internet," degrades the quality of online content and interactions. Platforms like Facebook are developing systems to detect AI-generated content, and advertisers are concerned their ads might be mistaken for slop. Meanwhile, Google plans to integrate AI-generated summaries into search results, raising further concerns about the future impact of slop on the internet and the challenge of distinguishing valuable content from AI-generated noise.

Discussion (2)

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samuraisteph profile image
SamuraiStephanie

It's going to be increasingly important to cut through the noise. Communities like cbx and others will become important ways to distill information beyond the slop.

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lesliewylde profile image
LeslieWylde • Edited on

Just going to leave this here

Experts estimate that as much as 90% of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026, according to Europol’s report. [0]

[0] futurism.com/the-byte/experts-90-o...