Fantastic piece on the slop epidemic. The distinction between filler and slop really nails it because filler atleast required human labor creating some friction. What's wild is how the economic incentives are basically designed to reward this stuff since platforms dont care about quality just engagement metrics. Once we hit a tipping point where algorithmic curation can't tell the differnce between real and generated content the whole ecosystem collapses.
I started getting ads at least a year ago about how I could make money selling books without writing them... and it was exactly this. Just prompt AI to slop some stuff out, put them up on Amazon and if you have enough "books" then you might actually make some money because it's all print on-demand or ebooks anyway. It's really sordid.
But…it’s even worse than that. You can’t thread this needle. It’s stealing from the best as it trains a new audience. Who’s to say it’s not as good? It can ape Shakespeare jn seconds. Grammy winners ignored the subject as they used their mic time for other causes… but this is the cause. This is about transcendent human creative genius vs machine plagiarism.
Let human artists be inspired by human artists. It has no place in the arts. Show your prompts, put a label on it and let the audience decide if the bots move them.
"The Slop Problem: AI, Filler, and Barbecue"-Bill Johns
Out Now!
Fantastic piece on the slop epidemic. The distinction between filler and slop really nails it because filler atleast required human labor creating some friction. What's wild is how the economic incentives are basically designed to reward this stuff since platforms dont care about quality just engagement metrics. Once we hit a tipping point where algorithmic curation can't tell the differnce between real and generated content the whole ecosystem collapses.
Maybe all the slop will lead more and more people to buy physical media and stop using streaming services that peddle in slop.
I started getting ads at least a year ago about how I could make money selling books without writing them... and it was exactly this. Just prompt AI to slop some stuff out, put them up on Amazon and if you have enough "books" then you might actually make some money because it's all print on-demand or ebooks anyway. It's really sordid.
But…it’s even worse than that. You can’t thread this needle. It’s stealing from the best as it trains a new audience. Who’s to say it’s not as good? It can ape Shakespeare jn seconds. Grammy winners ignored the subject as they used their mic time for other causes… but this is the cause. This is about transcendent human creative genius vs machine plagiarism.
Let human artists be inspired by human artists. It has no place in the arts. Show your prompts, put a label on it and let the audience decide if the bots move them.