Low-quality AI-generated content is now saturating social media – and generating about $117m a year, data shows

More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.

The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.

Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.

The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop. One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention.

The findings are a snapshot of a rapidly expanding industry that is saturating big social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualised, addictive and international.

    • 𒉀TheGuyTM3𒉁@lemmy.mlEnglish
      12·
      18 hours ago

      https://fediring.net/

      here’s your starting point on the veritable “web” as in “the cyberspace website megacomplex”, not as in “the virtual corporate paradise”

      Challenge of the day: get 10 hyperlinks deep from that webpage

      • krooklochurm@lemmy.caEnglish
        9·
        12 hours ago

        Lemmy is so weird.

        So much of it is carried over from Reddit but then you have these flashes of something new bubbling up to the surface, instants of clear distinction where Lemmy culture is branching off from the rest of the internet.

        I pray that we look back at this time fondly as the beginning of something great, and not with remorse standing outside a burnt down house.

        With a can full of gas a hand full of matches.

        And still no one found out.

      • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        14 hours ago

        On link #10 I ended up here which is an awesome idea for a site. Basically a museum of popular websites covering all time periods.