If you’ve watched videos on the Internet any time in the past year or two, you’ve encountered AI-generated content (Even if you don’t realize it). While some of them are convincing, a a lot It is obvious. Like, I’m guessing no one thought Those dramatic narrative videos of people made of fruit were painstakingly animated by hand. This type of artificially generated content has been lovingly (or not so lovingly) labeled “AI slop,” which sums it up: it’s pointless drill, produced with little effort or investment by some AI generator, that’s going viral on social media and making real money.
While all platforms that showcase short-form video are essentially already riddled with AI slop, YouTube has been hit particularly hard. YouTube Shorts may be borderline unwatchable depending on your algorithm. (Try looking in the hidden window to see what the platform works up to a blank slate; it’s wild out there.) What’s worse, YouTube’s algorithm shows these videos to children. Short-form video is bad for kids in a lot of ways, but the AI slope takes it to another level.
“Did this feel like an AI slop?”
There is some good news on this front, at least: Reported by DexertoStarting this month, it looks like YouTube is now asking users for their help in identifying this AI-generated content. In fact, the company isn’t mincing words or beating around the bush. If you’re called to action, you’ll receive a pop-up that literally reads: “Did this AI feel like slop?” According to this Redditor’s screenshotYou will have options to respond with any of the following: “Not at all,” “A little,” “Moderately,” “Very much,” or “Extremely.”
Why is YouTube asking for your help in identifying AI slop?
That sounds like a good thing, and I certainly hope it is. In an ideal world, YouTube would take the results from these findings and remove videos that are too bad. It tracks with some of the company’s past actions: YouTube has also removed popular AI channels In the name of “reducing the spread of low quality, repetitive content”.
What do you think so far?
But Dexerto highlights a different principleWhich is less optimistic. Perhaps the reason YouTube is giving you so many choices in its popup is to more precisely understand how viewers interpret these AI videos. YouTube will then be able to tell which videos are obviously AI slop, videos that exist in the uncanny valley. Using that data, they can train their own AI video models to generate content does not Come across as slop to most viewers. If you are scrolling on Shorts and videos you watch Experience Realistically, how likely are you to question whether or not they are legitimate?
I hope that is not the case. While I have little faith in tech companies, I was impressed by YouTube’s recent stance against the AI slope, and these flagging pop-ups seem to be another step in the right direction. With any luck, YouTube will continue to push high-quality, human-created content and crush the low-quality AI slop.
