When we call something “AI slop,” we’re often doing more than complaining about one output. Optimists use the term to quarantine failures away from AI’s promise; critics use it to indict the whole technology. Slop-talk thus lets us feel like we’re discussing important social issues without actually doing it.
I argue that we should have those discussions openly. This spring, arXiv started banning authors whose submissions bear the marks of unchecked AI use, the latest of several key institutions to move against “AI slop1, 2.” The reactions make sense, since cheap synthetic text now floods not only research repositories but also traditional and social media, art, advertisements, and even legal briefs. But what worries me is less the slop itself than how we’re using the term.
Sometimes we use the term just to complain about a bad AI output, but often we use it to smuggle in one of two much broader views about AI’s proper role in society, taking sides in an important social debate while seeming only to sneer at a single output. The move is slippery, often unintentional, and it allows us to avoid important discussions we should be having. One attitude “AI slop” can express is an attitude of quarantine.
In this use, the slop is seen as unfortunate and not representative. To call it “slop” is to try to cordon it off from the good stuff that AI can produce, the useful translation, the genuinely helpful code, or the new mathematical discovery3. This is how Sam Altman used the term when OpenAI launched Sora 2.
Creativity, he wrote, could be headed for “a Cambrian explosion,” while the “RL-optimized slop feed” was a degenerate case they put great care into avoiding4. It is also the attitude Google tried to take when its AI search suggested using glue to keep cheese on pizza. The company said such results came from uncommon queries5.
The embarrassing case was sealed off so the rollout could go on. A second attitude is one of contagion. In this use, the slop is not a defective specimen but a revelation.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
