In the chaos of today’s internet, there’s a flood of low-effort, algorithmically generated content, known as AI slop and it has become one of the most pervasive and damaging forces shaping what we see, believe, and create on a daily basis.
The modern internet has split into two parallel worlds. In one, the fast paced trends of politics, sport, news, and entertainment continue to turn as they always have. In the other, a new, disturbing ecosystem is starting to take place: AI slop – low-quality, unoriginal, algorithmically generated content with minimal human input. It ranges from the banal (cartoonish celebrity mashups, fantasy landscapes, anthropomorphized animals) to the unsettling (pornified, passive depictions of women). The sheer volume is staggering, seeping into timelines, message chains, and even “recommended for you” feeds and ads on every platform.
Political Memefare: The new poster propaganda
A particularly grotesque genre of AI slop is the rise of right-wing political fantasy. Platforms like YouTube are flooded with videos where Trump and his allies triumph over fabricated liberal villains in alternate realities. As a member of X (formerly Twitter), the number of posts increasing as a playground for ideologically driven memefare, reveal the disturbing potential of AI imagery: the White House’s official account joined a trend of posting Studio Ghibli-style illustrations, only to share an AI-generated image of a Dominican woman sobbing as she is arrested by ICE agents. For an Institution that holds so much power, this is unacceptable.
This wasn’t satire or critique, as we have covered before in our article about ChatGPT’s new tool to generate and Ghibli-fy images. In my opinion, this is pure aesthetic propaganda, designed to soften real-world oppression into a palatable, almost whimsical fantasy, compared to World War posters that we laugh at now.
Similarly in the sphere of politics, Chinese AI videos mocking overweight American workers after tariff announcements spread widely and as in a reality show, triggered clumsy official responses from the U.S. government. But even statements denouncing these videos had to be triple-checked for authenticity.
What we are witnessing is not the birth of a new political weapon; it is simply the old machinery of propaganda, stripped of human labor and ethical constraints, and fed into infinite production. Reality is no longer the raw material — fantasy is.
The algorithm doesn’t care about truth or art
Platforms like X, Facebook, and TikTok don’t care whether content is “junk” or journalism. As journalist Max Read put it, Facebook’s ideal feed is filled with “highly engaging content,” even if it’s pure slop. The cheaper and more emotional it is, the better.
As a creator using Ai generators and Adobe platforms to create, I feel even attacked by the AI slop, by either seeing my work remade, or the same ideas and repeating tropes of giant cats, fantasy cities, cozy cabins. I feel like whatever I make, it will be drowned beneath a tide of ten thousand “cute animal” images, spit out in seconds.
AI generative tools were supposed to be a technological revolution, promising advancements in every field, cutting costs and efforts. Instead, we’re going for hollow, “brain-rot” content, bland fantasy art, softcore doll-women and shallow political fantasies.
The use of AI slop for fascist nostalgia
But the problem isn’t just saturation or expression. It’s the usage of tools to spread misinformation, political propaganda, from individuals and leaders both.
Scholar Roland Meyer has pointed to the recent surge in AI-generated images of white, blond families, idealized, sanitized visions promoted by neofascist groups online. Generative AI is trained on historically biased datasets, so by status is structurally conservative, as the United Nations point out. It will do what it is told to do, in lines of its dataset and policies.
On X, I have seen the rise of racial and gender supremacy, as well as “trad wife” imagery – AI constructed fantasies of submissive, agreeable women, glimmering across X timelines, presented in soft, nostalgic tones. The platform allowed it to become a fever dream mentality, where such behaviour is encouraged. Beneath the visuals, you’ll often find comments glorifying violence, constraining women’s rights, and upholding fantasies of racial or political supremacy.
And it’s working. Platforms like X — led by figures openly sympathetic to authoritarian ideologies, amplify this content while having an algorithm that helps in suppressing voices. The algorithm rewards the most emotionally charged, reactionary material, pushing users deeper into subjective, isolated worlds rather than exposing them to reality.
Desensitization and cognitive impact
The psychological effects are profound. AI slop floods the senses with a constant stream of exaggerated, soothing, horrifying, and trivial imagery — all jumbled together. You are triggered by the last political meeting? Here’s an AI rendering of JD Vance as a giant baby sits next to footage of children being burned alive in Gaza. A political scandal is interrupted by an algorithmic suggestion for “minimalist apartments you need to see.” And then you get this effect of visual anaesthesia, where
the real world becomes background noise, just another tile in the endless feed.
In a paper from University of San Diego, and many similar research papers, it’s mentioned how negatively the 1 minute videos and scrolling endlessly through content negatively impacts our cognitive states.
The crisis and the circus
We are not heading toward dystopia because people are uninformed. We are sleepwalking into it because the constant, chaotic spectacle prevents coherent thought, sustained outrage, or meaningful action.
Even when content is serious, it is packaged as intermission: a darkly comic AI meme, a cozy fireplace animation, a synthetic dopamine drip to distract from the horrors we are witnessing.
The real crises — the rise of fascism, environmental collapse, the stripping away of civil rights — are drowned in the maximalist visual show. And for those of us who still try to create meaning, whether through writing, art, or photography, the battle is increasingly uphill. Our work is not merely competing for attention. It is competing against a system designed to erase meaning itself.
Can we stop the AI slop?
Where is this chaos leading? Towards a world where attention, meaning, and memory are shredded into 1 minute videos and less long reading posts. Toward a world where art is not a window or a mirror, but a disposable distraction.
As a creator working with AI, I refuse to surrender to the landfill. I believe it is still possible to use these tools to create beautiful work. But we must understand what we are up against: not just bad art, but a full-spectrum assault on our ability to perceive, to feel, and to act against censorship, theft, and dilution of real facts.
The real enemy isn’t AI. It’s the slop — and the systems that reward it.
