LinkedIn recently began testing a dedicated reporting tool for AI slop. After only a few weeks, the company says it's already improving the quality of the posts people see in their feeds. The "seems like AI slop" button has been used more than a million times since its launch, LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan shared in an update. "Members are now experiencing 40% less views on what we classify as AI slop from just a few weeks ago," he wrote. The company has so far been cagey in sharing exactly how it's using user-generated reports to weed out supposed slop.

A new channel on Roku's TV service offers all-you-can-eat AI programming. It is 12:04 p.m., and I've been watching AI slop for the past three hours. Before me on the screen, a man is playing trumpet in fog. He's been fired (bad market for trumpet players) but then, at last, he lands an interview. Trumpet Man sits at a large desk across from an obese fellow who asks how good he is with a mop.

ICE's DNA Collection Increases, SpaceX's Rocket Crashes Into the Moon, and the AI Backlash Grows In today's episode of, we discuss how ICE has been collecting DNA samples of people who have no criminal convictions, including children, which end up in an FBI database indefinitely. This week on, Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger break down how ICE has collected DNA from nearly a million people this year, including young children, feeding an FBI database indefinitely. Write to us at [email protected] . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . These samples have led to hundreds of thousands of people, including young children, to end up in an FBI criminal database basically forever. From Google Earth disabling its new AI tool after people used it to create fake maps to Substack partnering with the AI writing detection tool Pangram, companies are starting to realize that people really don't like low-quality AI content flooding their feeds. It's keeping the details mostly under wraps, but we're going to discuss what's behind all the secrecy and what this could mean for future regulation. WIRED's Dhruv Mehrotra reported this week about how ICE has collected nearly 1 million people's DNA this past year, just this past year alone, including that of young children. As we mentioned up top, this DNA collection has led to hundreds of thousands of people with no criminal convictions ending up in an FBI database indefinitely. And in fact, the Department of Homeland Security has become the single largest source of new profiles in this database.

Christopher Nolan says young people in particular are pushing back on AI and'they coined this term AI slop'. Christopher Nolan says young people in particular are pushing back on AI and'they coined this term AI slop'. Christopher Nolan says people'disdain' AI and the idea it will replace humans is'nonsense' Odyssey director addresses industry fears over artificial intelligence and says rightwing criticism of Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy is'irrelevant' The Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan believes the kind of movies he makes - big-budget action films shot mostly on location - would survive the spread of artificial intelligence, a technology he says many people "disdain". The Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight director is promoting his latest blockbuster, an adaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey, which will be released in cinemas this week. "The interesting thing with AI is I've never seen a technology that's been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors and by tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected," he told AFP in Paris.

How Much of Data-Center Activism Is Really AI Slop? Anti-AI sentiment is genuine, but its online expression looks stranger and stranger. Americans are wary of AI in general, and they are especially suspicious of the AI data centers that are popping up across the country like enormous mushrooms. A majority do not want a new data center built in their town. Across the country, community groups have organized to protest individual projects, and activists have successfully lobbied local and state politicians to place moratoriums on the facilities' construction.

When Stick Figure's six-year-old song shot up the charts, the band was thrilled. But its viral moment was spurred by unauthorized AI remixes. The California-based reggae band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like "Angels Above Me" did this past week. The six-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in six different countries, including the United Kingdom, Austria, and Canada, skyrocketing "out of nowhere," according to Woodruff. Stick Figure has had plenty of thrilling milestones before, with albums repeatedly hitting number one in the reggae category, and hit singles amassing hundreds of millions of streams.

AI'slop' is transforming social media - and a backlash is brewing Théodore remembers the AI slop that tipped him over the edge. The image was of two emaciated, impoverished South Asian children. For some reason, despite their boyish features they have thick beards. One of them had no hands and only one foot. The other was holding a sign saying it's his birthday and asking for likes.

PCWorld reports that ChatGPT 5.2 is now indexing Grokipedia, xAI's AI-generated encyclopedia known for inaccuracies and conspiracy theories. This creates a concerning feedback loop where AI-generated misinformation spreads between major language models, potentially overwriting established knowledge. The integration poses significant risks to information integrity as biased or false content from one AI system influences another's responses. More and more of the web is filling up with LLM-generated text, images, and even videos and music . It's an even bigger problem than it seems because the "AI" systems that have scoured the web to generate their large language models are now .

If I were to locate the moment AI slop broke through into popular consciousness, I'd pick the video of rabbits bouncing on a trampoline that went viral last summer. For many savvy internet users, myself included, it was the first time we were fooled by an AI video, and it ended up spawning a wave of almost identical generated clips. My first reaction was that, broadly speaking, all of this sucked. That's become a familiar refrain, in think pieces and at dinner parties. Everything online is slop now--the internet "enshittified," with AI taking much of the blame. But then friends started sharing AI clips in group chats that were compellingly weird, or funny.

The vast datacentres required are so expensive that many are financed by debt secured against future revenue. The vast datacentres required are so expensive that many are financed by debt secured against future revenue. Sun 4 Jan 2026 07.18 ESTLast modified on Sun 4 Jan 2026 08.47 EST The US dictionary Merriam-Websterâ s word of the year for 2025 was â slopâ, which it defines as â digital content of low quality that is produced, usually in quantity, by means of artificial intelligenceâ . The choice underlined the fact that while AI is being widely embraced, not least by corporate bosses keen to cut payroll costs, its downsides are also becoming obvious. In 2026, a reckoning with reality for AI represents a growing economic risk.