AI Slop, which refers to meaningless images created by artificial intelligence, is emerging. Shrimp Jesus, which recently became a hot topic, is also a kind of AI Slop, which will become a term representing the AI era following Internet spam.
Recently, major U.S. media have been pouring out reports on AI slops. The New York Times introduced it last month, and the Washington Post shed light on it on the 30th (local time). Business Insider and CNN joined the trend on the same day.
Slop refers to leftovers that farmers give to pigs. It means a creation that doesn't look very delicious, that is, a cheap creation. The AI-generated image, which has recently gained popularity on the Internet, has inherited Spam, which has been treated as a representative garbage in the Internet era.
Bizarre and surreal images are mixed up here. Following the shrimp Jesus, the image of "Chicken Jesus" with the face of Jesus attached to a fried chicken has become a meme, and recently "Baby Truck," which features dozens or hundreds of babies, is also a hot topic.
An X (Twitter) account called "AI Boomer Trap," which collects and posts only these images, has also appeared.
The operator, Khan Schoolcraft, sarcastically said, "Tiger Jesus, saving a beautiful crew member in a plane sunk in the mud, or images of hybrids, half human and half monkey, being eaten alive by fire ants, and people will say 'beautiful' or 'good' when they see this."
https://twitter.com/FacebookAIslop
It is well known that such an image heralds a "dead Internet" in which only AI operates. This time, the background of its appearance is also being discussed. This is because AI learns human works and imitates them as they are learned.
Jonathan Gilmore, a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, said, "These images contain tremendous madness, but they are balanced by their ordinary, realistic style."
"This image is a serious problem in the current art philosophy," he said. "It penetrates what art means and what art should do to us."
In other words, art has to make people feel something, and AI slop is having the most reliable success in the most vulgar way. Examples are frequent appearances of preferred materials such as religion, babies, dogs, and attractive characters.
In addition, it is evaluated that 'cringe', which means self-deprecation in technical terms, and 'kitsch', which means vulgar, are well developed areas.
However, artists who create artistic images with AI tools say that there is a difference between AI slops and their works.
Polina Kosdada, a 45-year-old artificial intelligence artist from Ukraine, described AI slops as "dead" images with no ideas or messages. On the contrary, they called them "live images" containing the artists' intentions and depth.
Some pointed out that the slop could have a real impact on art. "Surrealism was once the exclusive property of geniuses of that era, but now it spreads indiscriminately due to AI and causes fatigue," said the Mail, a researcher at the University of Central Europe.
Professor Gilmore also said, "We value works of art that are the product of struggle or are born by overwhelming talent," adding, "AI is so easy to produce that it is obvious that it will soon become boring, let alone art."
Business Insider also analyzed why these images flood social media, unlike spam messages.
"These accounts are not often linked to fraudulent advertisements, so Meta does not specifically ban them," he said. "Meta also developed image-generating AI and hopes to be used a lot."