Jason Kelce never said Bad Bunny's critics were “a bad fit for America's future.” George Kittle never ranted about politics and football. But thousands of people believed they did. The fabricated quotes spread across social media, racked up engagement, sparked outrage, and forced both NFL players to publicly deny saying words they never uttered.
This is AI slop. It is no longer a theoretical future risk. It is here, operating at scale, reshaping what people believe about athletes, celebrities, politicians, and world events. The term, which Merriam-Webster named its
A
The Business Model Behind the Lies
The economics of AI slop are disturbingly simple. According to
The creators behind this content are often entrepreneurs in countries with widespread internet connectivity and strong English proficiency. They feed prompts into generative AI tools that produce images, videos, and text for mere cents per piece.
Platforms algorithmically reward high engagement, and few things generate engagement like outrage, sympathy, and fear. A fake quote from an athlete about a political controversy performs better than accurate reporting. A fabricated scandal spreads further than a factual story about practice schedules.
Lisa Kaplan, founder and CEO of Alethea, told
The Damage Extends Beyond Annoyance
The consequences of AI slop extend beyond cluttered feeds and confused fans. Franchises fall prey to manipulated narratives; these narratives damage reputations, undermine trust, and politicize spaces that previously served as cultural common ground. Sports have long functioned as one of the few remaining touchpoints that unite people across political divides. That makes them attractive targets for influence operations.
The financial damage is also substantial. These networks divert advertising revenue from legitimate sports media. They also distort the audience data that media companies use for their planning. Some outbound links from these AI-slop accounts have been flagged for phishing and malicious redirects, posing a real fraud risk to fans who click.
The financial damage is also substantial. A good example comes from recent reporting on OpenAI’s video generator Sora. Forbes
It shows how distorted the economics have become. Media platforms are losing traffic, while companies building the tools pay giant operating bills to churn out low-value clips at a scale that overwhelms real content.
What Comes Next
The obvious response is to demand that platforms take responsibility. Some efforts are underway. YouTube has begun blocking revenue sharing for channels posting repetitive, “inauthentic” content. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity is
Censorship presents its own dangers. Heavy-handed content moderation often catches legitimate speech in its nets. Free expression advocates worry about giving corporations or governments expanded powers to decide what counts as acceptable information. Yet, allowing synthetic lies to circulate unchecked until they overwhelm authentic content represents a different kind of threat to public discourse.
The Alethea
What is clear is that the conversation needs to shift. AI slop is not a future problem requiring foresight and preparation. It is a present crisis requiring immediate attention. The excitement surrounding generative AI’s creative potential is understandable, but that enthusiasm must be matched by a serious defense of truth. Without shared agreement on what actually happened, who actually said what, and which events are real, the foundations of informed public life begin to crumble. We are watching that erosion happen in real time. The question now is whether we can respond fast enough to matter.