[tomku]

"AI slop" is following the same path as "Dunning-Kruger effect," "enshittification," and so many other terms. Someone introduces a term that's useful to describe an actual phenomenon, it rapidly spreads to dominate the discourse because it's topical and punchy, and pretty soon using it is such a strong signal of being one of the "cool people who hates all the correct bad stuff" that people use it to describe stuff they merely don't like or disagree with. Once everyone's using it, it becomes useless for both its original descriptive purpose and as a social signal, so all the trendy discourse addicts move onto the next linguistic innovation and you only see random people on Facebook or Reddit who are behind the times using it, usually inaccurately as they're just following the misuse they learned it from.

It's particularly scary watching "AI slop" follow that path because of the extreme moral polarization associated with using LLMs or generative art. There's people who will see some casual mention of a game or film or app or something "using AI" on social media without evidence and immediately blast off into a witch hunt to make sure the whole world knows that whoever involved with that thing are Bad People who need to be shunned and punished. It has almost immediately become the go-to way to slam someone online because it carries such strong implications, requires little/no evidence, and is almost impossible to fully refute. Think there's a lot to learn from observing this, and it does not bode well for the next few years of discourse.