Merriam-Webster named "slop" its 2025 word of the year, defining it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." In its announcement, Merriam-Webster noted that, like " slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don't want to touch." Similarly, The New York Times observed that slop, in graphic terms, "conjures images of heaps of unappetizing food being shoveled into troughs."
Various groups are keeping their eyes peeled for hacking and information warfare efforts launched in response to an unprecedented U.S. operation conducted over the weekend that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to face criminal charges. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is continuing to monitor the cyber landscape in the raid's aftermath. In a written statement, CISA acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala did not acknowledge any disinformation tracking, but said that the recent events in Venezuela demand "heightened vigilance" across sectors.
Meet Neuro-sama, a cutesy AI-powered character which is now the top streamer on Twitch by active subscriber-count, according to Twitch Tracker. At the time of writing, Nuero-sama - streaming via the Twitch channel Vedal987 - has 165,268 paid active subscribers, well above the second-highest channel, the human-ran Jynxzi. On Twitch, each paid subscriber is valued at $5 a month, some of which is split with Twitch. According to an estimate by Dextero, that means Neuro-sama is raking in at least $400,000 a month just from subscriptions - and that's on top of random viewer donations, sponsorships, and ad revenue.
He argues that the algorithms have grown too sophisticated at sorting viewers into their own individual silos. If a viewer seeks out automotive content, they receive more automotive content. If they like health and beauty, their feed is largely restricted to health and beauty. The days of a single creator punching through to hundreds of millions of viewers are effectively over. Donaldson's rise required a specific historical moment, one where recommendation engines still permitted the emergence of mass figures. That window has closed.
As reported by Deadline, the Google-owned video platform has terminated two massive YouTube channels that peddled fake, AI-generated movie trailers, in what is one of the most high profile actions it's taken against the AI spam polluting the platform. Combined, the channels - called Screen Culture, based in India, and KH Studio, based in the US - boasted over two million subscribers and more than one billion views.
Concord, NH - Attorney General John M. Formella and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general are calling on Meta to better enforce its own policies about pharmaceutical and wellness ads on Instagram and Facebook and take additional measures to prevent AI-generated weight loss content in ads. These ads are likely to see an uptick during the holiday season and the new year, when conversations around weight loss and appearance tend to increase.
A few months ago, I went to a birthday party at a bar in Neepsend, an old industrial neighbourhood by the River Don in Sheffield. The bar had been a steelworks once, but now it was another example of the international style you find everywhere, from Portland, Oregon, to all the other Portlands in Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand: exposed brick, steel beams, concrete floors, Edison bulbs. The steelworkers had been transformed into accountants and brand managers, the molten pig iron into £9 cocktails.
We've seen an absolute deluge of AI slop this year, from fake movie trailers on YouTube to AI-generated bands on Spotify. Not even food delivery like could escape the onslaught of AI-generated garbage that no one asked for. It's gotten to the point that half the videos my well-meaning parents send me on social media are AI-generated videos of dogs. This isn't all that surprising given how very intentionally the social media giants have added slop to all our feeds.
hey everyone, sooo... looks like Google actually started cracking down on AI generated stuff. my main site literally disappeared from search results overnight. it was ranking for months with ai articles (yea i know, bad idea now ). i used chatgpt and a few rewriters to make them "human", but seems like google aint buying it anymore. i got zero traffic now.
I've felt this too. There's a frustration I can't quite shake when consuming content now-a feeling of being stuck in a loop where everything sounds the same. I'll read a blog post, skim some code, review a document, and something feels off. Not necessarily wrong, but homogeneous. Like I've seen this exact structure, these exact words, a thousand times before. And maybe I have.
"Seattle's cosplay photography is a treasure trove of inspiration for fans of the genre. Check out these real-life cosplay locations and photos taken by @mrdangphotos. From costumes to locations, get the scoop on how to recreate these looks and capture your own cosplay moments in Seattle." effect, in which bots are essentially eating themselves over and over, in order to game their own systems.
Despite the rise of AI-generated summaries, ranking for key search terms remains essential, and authentic video content will become even more valuable for SEO and GEO visibility. SEO won't be going anywhere, GEO will still use top ranking results as one of the parameters when looking for references, so it's still important to rank on important keywords that are relevant to business.
Reddit is considered one of the most human spaces left on the internet, but mods and users are overwhelmed with slop posts in the most popular subreddits. A Reddit post about a bride who demands a wedding guest wear a specific, unflattering shade is sure to provoke rage, let alone one about a bridesmaid or mother of the groom who wants to wear white. A scenario where a parent asks someone on an airplane to switch seats so they can sit next to their young child is likely to invoke the same rush of anger.
SkyWalk fraudsters have embedded secret web browsers inside various iOS gaming apps. These apps are downloadable in the App Store and appear legitimate. Their games are playable. But when a user opens one, the app also secretly launches hidden websites on the user's iOS device. As the user plays "Sushi Party" or "Bicycle Race" in the app, the hidden sites run in the background, undetected, serving ads no one sees. Impressions are reported. Advertisers get billed. Not a single ad is viewed by a human.