The TikTok logo seen displayed on a smartphone with an Artificial intelligence (AI) chip and symbol in the background. (Photo Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
If you’re a TikTok user, chances are high that you’ve encountered AI-generated videos on your feed.
AI-generated content has infested TikTok—over a billion AI videos have been uploaded to the video-sharing platform, and TikTok intends to do something about it.
What Is TikTok Doing To Combat AI Content?
TikTok is experimenting with a new feature that will allow users to reduce (or increase) the amount of AI videos that will appear on their FYP feed.
TikTok users won’t be able to block AI entirely, but the move aims to give users more control over the content they see.
AI-generated video has made significant advancements since the early, nightmarish outputs that were unable to generate convincing footage of Will Smith Eating Spaghetti.
New models like ChatGPT’s Sora and Google’s Veo 3 pass Smith’s Spaghetti test, and are more than capable of generating coherent, complex footage.
Such models are being used to pump out a lowly form of short-form video content derisively referred to as “AI slop.”
What Is AI Slop?
AI slop is low-effort, AI-generated content, often defined by bizarre, attention-grabbing imagery, in which each scene lunges unexpectedly into a new twist, resulting in feverishly incoherent narratives.
Concepts that manage to catch the fleeting attention of social media users are repeated and expanded upon, no matter how strange.
The speed and ease of video generation combined with the race for attention results in freakishly specific trends, weirder than the most absurd memes, such as a series of AI-generated videos featuring women shattering glass bridges with boulders.
While some users enjoy watching AI-generated content, others seek to push it out of their feeds entirely.
Many social media users have complained about the flood of low-effort AI-generated slop that has invaded TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
But slop doesn’t have to contain grotesque or surreal imagery—there are plenty of grounded, convincing videos that are very difficult to spot as AI, some clips disguised as fuzzy security camera footage, or even a legitimate news broadcast.
The danger of misinformation, propaganda and other harmful content is obvious, but a subtler, yet significant side-effect of our AI-infested internet is that video footage can no longer be fully trusted.
Watermarks can help users understand the nature of the content they are watching, but not all AI-generated content is marked as artificial, and watermarks can be removed.
On social media, there is a growing demand for AI-free spaces, especially for artists looking to share their work.
Vine, the once-popular short-form video app that preceded TikTok, is being resurrected as “Divine,” and the platform promises to ban AI content.
While a complete ban might prove difficult to implement, the concept is intriguing, and the announcement was received positively on social media.
Some compared Divine’s “no tolerance” approach to Disney’s recent embrace of the technology, with AI-generated short-form content soon to appear on Disney+, sparking criticism from fans.
While slop is often defined by uncanny, surreal imagery, realistic AI content is another, growing brand of slop, a far more insidious sort.
Realistic slop is becoming increasingly hard to spot, and certain kinds of AI content can only go viral if it is perceived as real footage.
A TikTok account @basincreekretirement that blew up around Halloween featured videos of elderly residents in a care home dressed in costumes. The videos were popular, many racking up millions of views, until viewers realized that it was all AI-generated.
After the news spread, engagement tanked. Those videos, it seems, had little value without the illusion of humanity.
People, generally, want to engage with the work of real people on social media (it’s in the name), and the hallucinations of machines can only provide so much novelty.
The future of social media might well be a simple “off switch” to block the flow of AI content.
Either that, or embrace the Dead Internet Theory.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2025/11/26/tiktok-is-pushing-back-against-ai-slop/