According to TechSpot, a new report from video editing firm Kapwing has quantified the “AI slop” problem on YouTube. The firm simulated a new user’s experience and found that 21% of the first 500 Shorts served were AI-generated, low-quality content, with another 33% classified as “brainrot.” The global viewership is staggering: South Korea leads with over 8.45 billion views on its top AI channels, followed by Pakistan and the U.S. in third with 3.39 billion views. Some of these channels are wildly profitable, with India’s “Bandar Apna Dost” estimated to earn $4.25 million per year and a U.S. Spanish-language channel, Cuentos Facinantes, amassing 5.95 million subscribers. The report underscores that this isn’t just a YouTube issue, as AI-generated content now permeates the entire web.
The Inescapable Sludge
Here’s the thing: these numbers are probably conservative. Kapwing’s method only looked at the first 500 videos for a new account. But what happens after you watch a few? The algorithm, designed to maximize engagement, likely doubles down. If low-effort AI slop keeps people scrolling, it’s going to get served up more and more. That’s the scary feedback loop. We’re not talking about sophisticated AI documentaries here. This is the careless, often nonsensical stuff—weird animations with robotic narration, “facts” lists with dubious sources, clickbait story compilations. It’s designed for one thing: to farm views and, by extension, ad revenue. And it’s clearly working, given those multi-million-dollar annual earnings for the top channels. Makes you wonder what the percentage is for a heavily used account, doesn’t it?
Winners, Losers, and a Shifting Web
So who wins in this landscape? Obviously, the creators (if you can call them that) of these channels, and the platforms that take a cut of the ad revenue. The losers are everyone else: legitimate creators who can’t compete with an infinite content firehose, and users who now have to sift through digital landfill to find anything of substance. The entire quality baseline of the internet is being dragged down. It also warps the competitive landscape for real businesses trying to market online. How do you compete for attention against a flood of zero-marginal-cost content? This is the dark side of the democratization of content creation. When the barrier to entry drops to zero, volume wins over quality every single time. It’s a race to the bottom, and we’re watching it happen in real-time.
Beyond the Feed
Now, this report focused on YouTube Shorts, but let’s be real. This is everywhere. Your social media feeds, “news” aggregator sites, product review blogs—it’s all being flooded. Kapwing’s full report notes it’s no wonder “slop” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. The definition is perfect: “careless, low-quality content generated by computer applications.” The question isn’t really how to stop it. That ship has sailed. The question is how we, as users, adapt. Do we retreat to smaller, curated communities? Pay for subscription-based content from actual humans? Or do we just get used to the sludge, letting our attention spans and standards erode until we can’t tell the difference anymore? I don’t have the answer, but the fact that we have to ask is telling. The internet feels fundamentally different now, and not in a good way.
