The AI Slop Debate Is Missing the Point

Open almost any social media app these days and it won’t take long before you see someone complaining about “AI slop.”

The term has become shorthand for everything people don’t like about artificial intelligence. Images that aren’t quite right. Articles without personality or purpose. Low-effort videos. Spam bots flooding social media and search results. Music that sounds almost right… until it doesn’t.

Some of the criticism is probably deserved.

There’s plenty of low-quality content being produced with AI. If you’ve spent more than a few minutes online lately, you’ve probably seen it yourself.

It almost seems vogue to criticize AI slop. Truthfully, I’m growing tired of the complaints. Part of me just wants to say “get over it.” But then I realize people are arguing about the wrong thing.

The problem isn’t AI.

The problem is that we’ve suddenly entered a world where creating something has become dramatically easier, and we’re still trying to judge that world using standards that belonged to the last one.

AI Didn’t Invent Slop

How about a history review?

Long before ChatGPT arrived, the internet was overflowing with clickbait headlines, recycled listicles, SEO farms, spam blogs, horrible ebooks, and videos that added nothing to the conversation. I’ve watched it for more than thirty years now. It’s some of the worst “slop” imaginable.

Humans have always been capable of producing mediocre work.

AI didn’t invent that. It simply lowered the cost of producing it.

If you want to reframe the debate, here it is.

If AI disappeared tomorrow, would bad content disappear with it?

Of course not.

The tools have changed. But guess what? Human nature didn’t.

Every Creative Revolution Looks the Same

I’ve spent most of my career watching technology reshape entire industries and every major advance follows a remarkably familiar pattern.

When desktop publishing arrived, designers worried anyone could call themselves a graphic artist. I was using Aldus Pagemaker 35 years ago and it empowered me to create newsletters.

When digital cameras became affordable, photographers complained that everyone suddenly thought they were a photographer.

When blogging exploded, journalists predicted the end of quality writing.

When YouTube took off, anyone with an iPhone became a filmmaker.

Every single one of those technologies produced libraries of mediocre work.

But they also produced extraordinary work.

What happened is the barrier to entry fell.

But the barrier to excellence never did.

History Doesn’t Remember Average

I started blogging on JoelComm.com in 2003. That’s twenty-three years ago, and boy does that make me feel old!

And when I think back to the blogging boom, memories of GeoCities and Blogger hop around my brain.

There were literally tens of millions of blogs.

So where are they now? Most disappeared without anyone noticing. No fanfare.

A few of those blogs survived and became indispensable.

The same thing happened with YouTube.

I posted my first video in 2006. Some were useful at the time and some are just frozen in time.

The platform filled with forgettable videos, but it also created educators, entertainers, journalists, historians, scientists, and storytellers who reached audiences that traditional media never could.

History has a funny way of filtering abundance.

We rarely remember the noise, but we do remember the signal.

Why AI Feels Different

AI does introduce something new to the equation.

Unlike previous creative tools, it doesn’t simply help us create faster.

It can write, illustrate, compose and code.

I suppose it’s not unusual that some people feel uneasy about it.

If a machine can generate something that resembles human work in seconds, where does that leave the people who’ve spent years learning their craft?

The question is perfectly reasonable.

But I don’t think the answer is found by rejecting the technology.

It’s found by understanding what the technology can’t replace.

The New Scarcity

For most of history, the scarce resource was the ability to publish. Gutenberg came along with his printing press and I’ve no doubt many scribes felt threatened at the time.

Fast forward to present day. The internet allows almost anyone to publish anything.

AI has simply accelerated that trend.

The scarce resource isn’t creation anymore.

It’s discernment.

It’s judgment.

And it’s knowing the difference between something that merely exists and something worth your time and attention.

The irony here is sweet. It might turn out that AI increases the value of those very human qualities.

Twenty years ago, I was teaching people how to monetize their content with Google AdSense. I used to say, “content is king.”

But when millions of pieces of content can be created every hour, people don’t need more content.

They need better filters.

They need trusted voices.

And they need people whose judgment they’ve learned to rely on.

Where I Agree with the Critics

I’m not suggesting that we be blindly enthusiastic about everything people are creating with AI.

We have to watch out for cognitive debt.

If we let AI do all of our thinking, our ability to reason weakens over time.

Some research suggests this is already happening.

I worry about children growing up before they’ve developed independent thinking.

I worry about adults who begin accepting answers without understanding how those answers were reached.

These are very real concerns.

But using AI as a substitute for thinking is very different from using it as a tool that expands what thoughtful people can accomplish.

What We Should Be Talking About

Instead of asking whether AI is ruining creativity, maybe we should be asking a better question.

How do we raise the value of original thinking in a world where production has become nearly effortless? This is challenging in a world where narrative of the day is often put forth as more valuable than independent thought.

How do we teach discernment? Without wisdom, all the knowledge in the world won’t move civilization forward.

How do we reward quality instead of volume? Being lazy is easy. Hard work takes commitment, focus and fortitude.

How do we help young people develop judgment before they begin relying on tools that can do so much of the work for them? Parents, this one is on you.

All of these questions strike me as far more useful than arguing over whether AI should exist. Or whether or not the quality of what we see is mediocre.

Like it or not, that decision has already been made.

The Tide Doesn’t Reverse

Every transformative technology creates resistance.

Sometimes the concerns are justified and sometimes they’re exaggerated.

Usually it’s a little of both.

But history offers very few examples of society deciding a useful technology has become too successful and putting it back in the box.

The printing press stayed.

Photography stayed.

The internet stayed.

Smartphones stayed.

AI will stay, too.

You don’t have to like it.

You don’t even have to use it every day.

You can create art with paints and canvas. You can take photos with your 35mm camera.

You can go full rebel and decide to slide a piece of paper into your Smith-Corona typewriter for your latest article if you wish. (Just have some white-out handy).

But spending your energy hating on AI or wishing it would disappear feels a little like standing on the shoreline arguing with the tide.

The water keeps coming in.

The more interesting question isn’t whether AI belongs here.

It’s whether we’ll become better at recognizing where our attention should go.

I don’t think we’re entering an age where AI replaces human creativity.

I think we’re entering an age where human judgment becomes more valuable than it’s ever been.