this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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In my opinion, AI Slop is content made with AI that is low effort. People feel and know the quality of something, and if it feels like slop, it feels like slop.

AI being used is not a deal breaker for me as long as the product is good. AI isn’t magic and it takes skills and knowledge to use it and to judge what the model outputs.

You may see it differently however, some might believe that the use of any AI tools whatsoever turns any app into slop the moment the first commit with AI code in it is made.

What do you think, what does AI Slop mean to you?

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[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 45 points 2 days ago (20 children)

AI slop is the output of all generative AI, full stop.

Slop itself is anything produced for the sake of being produced. Something without feeling or soul, just more content for the content machine.

Like, yes it does take some level of skill to "prompt engineer" the AI and get it to show you the thing you want, but it's still not a distinctive style, it's still not your style. If you say, "sloth astronaut" I can imagine that in my head in my own way, there's no value in producing an AI image. As far as I'm concerned, an AI image narrows down all the possibilities of my own imagination into the specific piece of slop from the slop machine. If I wanted to see it, the point would be to see an interpretation in someone's style.

I can't remember where I saw this argument recently, it was something coming out of Capcom saying they'd use AI for background details and people citing specific examples from Pragmata maybe? Things like vending machines and environmental details that could be streamlined with the help of AI. But even these small details are places for environmental artists to shine. Show off their skills, hide small details and world building, and little in jokes. It may not be much but it adds to the overall texture and flavor of the product. It does matter.

AI is slop, is slop, is slop. There's absolutely no reforming it and if I detect even a whiff of it, I'm out.

[–] lime@feddit.nu -4 points 2 days ago (18 children)

i agree with you, but i'll give you a counterexample.

i generate ai images for me. i use only local models and i never share it publically because the output is not really the point, the process is. here is my process:

i come up with a concept, usually a person or a scene. i then take random images from the internet, cut out the parts i think fit together, and add them as layers in a client called "invoke ai". if needed i color match the parts in krita first. then i describe the scene i've made in a prompt, adding the normal positive and negative keywords to steer generation. i also pull the "blur image" ratio down to 40%.

the model then makes an image with my digital scrapbook as a base, melting together disjunct elements into a scene. invoke then allows me to move all the elements around and regenerate the scene, or select a few specific elements to regenerate, or paint on top of the scene and generate something new from that, or select part of the scene and change the prompt for that area. it's a fun little game, and it feels like collaborating with people who know lighting and perspective better than i do.

most time i've spent doing this is half a day, just iterating and tweaking and filling in details. i'm in no way an artist, i'm playing around. it's basically as resource intensive as playing a video game, and i'm not one to share gameplay footage either.

[–] soratoyuki@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Your local chat bot is still trained on data stolen at an astronomical scale, and, even if we accept your use case as 'less' bad, it still drives demand for 'worse' chat bots owned by oligarchs that want to destroy the world.

The tool is evil even if it has interesting niche applications.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

correct. though stable diffusion was initially trained on LAION5, which is a free and open dataset compiled for scientific research which in itself had copyrighted material in it. that didn't come out until after the model was out there because it didn't matter to anyone before. scientists had used it for deep learning tasks for years at that point.

and the source images i take i also do without payment or copyright acknowledgement. as is the shows i watch on my jellyfin server, and some of the computer games i play, and the music i used to record off of the radio onto cassettes, and the comic characters i used to cut out of magazines as a child to make my own comics with.

i'm not saying those things are all equivalent. i'm saying that this problem isn't new. i'll stand up and defend small artists against big corporations any day, and i'll gladly pay people for their time. my patreon bill alone is proof of that. i've canceled netflix and spotify over their unfair treatment of artists. i've written to my members of parliament, both local and in the eu, about how the copyright system is broken, how the slogan "information wants to be free" doesn't automatically mean that meta can leech eighty terabytes of copyrighted material or that the us government can use any work they want in their propaganda material without paying. i've driven discussion about rightsholders and the unfairness of payouts to the little guy both at work and during my off time. i've voted against corporate control of media for years. i've voted pirate. i've voted socialist. i've voted green.

but sometimes i just want to dick around.

believe you me i've thought about this.

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