AI slop has penetrated almost every corner of the internet
Generative AI makes it easy to create sequences of text, images, videos, and other types of materials. It takes just a few seconds from inputting the prompts for the selected model to outputting the results, making these models a quick and easy way to create content at scale. And 2024 was the year we started calling this (generally low-quality) media AI slop.
This dangerous method of creating AI slop can be found almost everywhere on the internet, from newsletters in your inbox and books for sale on Amazon, to ads and articles on the web, to shocking photos on social media. It means AI can discover it. Feed. The more emotionally evocative these photos are (wounded veterans, crying children, signals of support in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), the more likely they are to be shared and, as a result, the more savvy creators Increase engagement and ad revenue.
AI slop is not just a nuisance, its rise poses real challenges to the future of the very models that helped generate it. Since these models are trained based on data collected from the internet, the increasing number of junk websites containing AI garbage means that the output and performance of the models will steadily deteriorate. means there is a real danger of
AI art is distorting our expectations of real-life events
2024 was also the year when the influence of hyper-realistic AI images began to permeate our real lives. The Willie’s Chocolate Experience is an informal, immersive event inspired by Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where fanciful AI-generated marketing materials invite visitors to experience more than just a sparsely decorated warehouse. It made headlines around the world in February because it looked so much more grandiose. Created by the producer.
Similarly, hundreds of people lined the streets of Dublin for a Halloween parade that didn’t exist. A Pakistan-based website used AI to create a list of events in the city, which was shared widely across social media ahead of October 31st. The SEO attack site (myspirithalloween.com) has since been taken down, but both events illustrate how it was done. Misplaced social trust in AI-generated online material may come back to bite us.
Grok allows users to create images for almost any scenario
The majority of major AI image generators include guardrails (rules that govern what AI models can and cannot do) to prevent users from creating violent, explicit, illegal, or other types of harmful content. ) is provided. In some cases, these guardrails are simply meant to prevent anyone from blatantly using someone else’s intellectual property. But Grok, the assistant developed by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, ignores almost all of these principles, just as Musk rejects what he calls “woke AI.” are.