There’s a ton of AI slop out there, no question. But is everything we call slop actually slop? I don’t think so, and I’m including myself here. These are a few biases I caught in myself. Think of it as a checklist before you call something slop.
You Feel Threatened, and You’re Probably Having Some Sort of Identity Crisis
You spent years, maybe decades, honing something, crafting it and building a career on it, only for some LLM to come along and do it. Look, I know AI can’t do everything, and that’s true. You’ve probably heard the advice to find something where you can still provide value, like going from coder to architect. But I also hate that people (programmers especially) used to enjoy coding for the sake of coding, and now the whole world has decided that’s a waste of time. Who cares? Keep doing your thing. Just be mindful of what you call AI slop and what you don’t.
It All Looks the Same
There’s some truth to this, but before AI we had plenty of things that looked the same. People pick up a technique or technology that saves them time, and the price they pay is not being special or unique anymore. For a while every site was a Bootstrap site, then everything went flat, and the list goes on. I’m not saying that justifies it. All I’m saying is there’s room for similarity, and not everything has to be unique.
Fast = Slop
I think this comes from the fact that people equate something that takes a long time to build or make with quality. We love handmade things, art and antiques, even when, to be fair, they’re not that beautiful or even good quality. We appreciate the time and effort that went into them. So when someone says they built something in an afternoon with AI, you’ve already marked it down before you even look at it.
You Only Notice the Bad Ones
When AI is used well, you don’t notice it. It just reads like a good article, looks like a good site, works like good code. So nobody calls it AI. The only stuff that gets labelled as AI is the stuff that’s obviously AI, and that’s usually the bad stuff. So of course it feels like everything made with AI is slop. Your sample is broken from the start. I bet you read something this week that had AI all over it and you had no idea.
Expectations Are Much Higher Now
Ironically, because of AI itself. Remember copying code back and forth from the ChatGPT app, the first Sonnet coding model, the first AI videos, the first AI-built landing pages people shared online? Those set the bar really high, and now whatever you do or build, everyone else can do too.
So, Is It Slop?
Sometimes, yes. I’m not saying there isn’t too much AI slop out there. There is. And calling it out is a good thing. It’s the only way things get better. I’m just saying a lot of us have made up our minds before we even look at the thing, just because it’s AI. So next time, run through the list first. If it’s still slop after that, call it.
Where do we go from here? Honestly, I don’t know.
I’ll call it a day here. I’m sure I’m missing a few biases, so I might update this later. Let me know what you think, and tell me which ones I missed. Thanks.