this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
111 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

38307 readers
593 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org
gyrfalcon@beehaw.org
rs5th@beehaw.org
coldredlight@beehaw.org
SemioticStandard@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social
remington@beehaw.org
111
AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 day ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@beehaw.org
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.17-153712/https://www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a-brute-force-attack-on-the-algorithms-that-control-reality/

The best way to think of the slop and spam that generative AI enables is as a brute force attack on the algorithms that control the internet and which govern how a large segment of the public interprets the nature of reality. It is not just that people making AI slop are spamming the internet, it’s that the intended “audience” of AI slop is social media and search algorithms, not human beings. 

What this means, and what I have already seen on my own timelines, is that human-created content is getting almost entirely drowned out by AI-generated content because of the sheer amount of it. On top of the quantity of AI slop, because AI-generated content can be easily tailored to whatever is performing on a platform at any given moment, there is a near total collapse of the information ecosystem and thus of "reality" online. I no longer see almost anything real on my Instagram Reels anymore, and, as I have often reported, many users seem to have completely lost the ability to tell what is real and what is fake, or simply do not care anymore.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My hope is that people will just start using social media that specifically tries to avoid AI generated content. Where they know they are directly interacting with real people. I think what's frustrating for me is that we're seeing this technology being used for bad reasons. I think AI has specific use cases where it could be extremely useful? But I think there's far more ways it's being used for garbage right now.

I've noticed when I'm watching YouTube videos specifically. I've started to gravitate slightly towards videos that have lower production values. Or that seem a lot more casual and genuine.

[–] IceAgeTower@feddit.it 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

social media that specifically tries to avoid AI generated content

Which is more or less what many instances in the Fediverse are trying to do. But I wonder: how long will it last? When (IF) Lemmy should blow up, will it even be possible to prevent an AI flood relentlessly backed up by bots?

[–] Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 1 points 10 hours ago

I'm not sure if we can prevent it entirely. I suppose all it would take is one bad actor to get a bot set up, and it would be off to the races.

I would hope that we would be able to figure out ways of identifying real people online. Surely, there's gotta be some way we can alleviate the issue?