YouTube Is Recommending AI Trash To Millions, Study Reveals

A new study has found that more than 20 percent of videos recommended by YouTube's algorithm to new users consist of low-quality, AI-generated content, commonly known as "AI slop". The research, conducted by video-editing company Kapwing, analysed the top 15,000 YouTube channels worldwide, including the top 100 from each country, to assess how much of the platform's suggested content is driven by automated video creation rather than original human-made material.

The study identified 278 channels that uploaded only AI slop videos. Collectively, these channels have attracted more than 63 billion views and 221 million subscribers, and are estimated to generate around $117 million in annual revenue.

To understand how prevalent this content is in practice, researchers created a new YouTube account and examined the first 500 videos recommended to it. They found that 104 of those videos, over 20 percent, were AI slop, while roughly one-third were classified as "brainrot," a broader category of low-quality, attention-farming content.

AI slop refers to machine-generated videos that are often decontextualised, repetitive or visually simplistic, created primarily to attract views and subscriptions rather than to inform or entertain meaningfully. Critics argue that the prevalence of such content on recommendation feeds could undermine user experience and overshadow high-quality, creator-driven videos.

A Guardian analysis this year found that nearly 10% of YouTube's fastest-growing channels were AI slop, racking up millions of views despite the platform's efforts to curb "inauthentic content".

The findings offer a snapshot of a rapidly expanding trend in digital media, where generative AI is reshaping the content ecosystem on major platforms like YouTube. Despite efforts by tech companies to crack down on low-quality or misleading videos, AI-generated content continues to spread widely, raising questions about algorithm design and the balance between quantity and quality in online video recommendations.

What is AI slop?

According to The Conversation, AI slop refers to low to mid quality content, be it video, images, audio, text, or a combination, created using AI tools, often with little concern for accuracy. This type of content is fast, cheap, and easy to produce, and is typically shared on social media to exploit internet attention economics, often pushing aside higher-quality, more informative material.

The volume of AI slop has been rising in recent years. As the word "slop" suggests, its growing presence is generally seen as a negative trend for internet users.