AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel  ## Metadata - Author: [[Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell]] - Full Title: AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [AI, Internet, Misinformation] author: [MISSING] source: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0] date created: 2025-10-08 10:30 --- # 🏷️ Title: AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Add bot-traffic stats to slide — Imperva 2025 report. - [H2] Note “1,271 AI news sites” — NewsGuard tracking center. - [H3] Capture AI Overviews click-drop research — Pew short read. - [H4] Cite hidden prompts in papers — Guardian/WaPo/arXiv roundup. - [H5] Add AI-language drift in papers — biomedical writing study. - [H6] Include music-platform slop context — Financial Times coverage. - [H7] Link video publish date — Archive.org mirror. - [H8] Track Google summaries’ impact on news traffic — Guardian analysis. - [H9] Add TollBit/LLM retrieval trend — Washington Post. - [H10] Cross-link The WPCC funding narrative — prepare #articleseed brief. ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - YouTube: [AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0) - Channel: [Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell](https://www.youtube.com/@kurzgesagt) - Archive mirror (publish date 2025-10-07): [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/a_zfN9wnPvU0) - [Imperva 2025 Bad Bot Report](https://www.imperva.com/resources/resource-library/reports/2025-bad-bot-report/) - [NewsGuard AI Tracking Center](https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/ai-tracking-center) - [Pew Research: Google AI Summaries and Clicks](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/) - [Guardian: AI summaries cut traffic](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/24/ai-summaries-causing-devastating-drop-in-online-news-audiences-study-finds) - [Guardian: Hidden prompts in papers](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/14/scientists-reportedly-hiding-ai-text-prompts-in-academic-papers-to-receive-positive-peer-reviews) - [Washington Post: AI-assisted peer review issues](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/17/ai-university-research-peer-review/) - [arXiv: Hidden prompts analysis](https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06185) - [Study: LLM language in biomedical writing](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12219543/) - [FT: AI slop in music platforms](https://www.ft.com/content/f1dfc2f5-9e4d-4f0a-8008-cdc87bd1cef9) - [Washington Post: TollBit AI bot retrieval trends](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/11/tollbit-ai-bot-retrieval/) ## 📝 Summary - Kurzgesagt warns that “AI slop” — low-effort machine-generated content — is flooding the web. - Roughly half of all internet traffic now comes from bots. - Over 1,200 AI-generated news sites spread misinformation that often becomes self-reinforcing. - Hidden AI prompts and uncredited AI writing in papers erode scientific trust. - AI summaries reduce clicks to original sources, threatening creators’ sustainability. - Kurzgesagt pledges to remain human-made, emphasizing rigorous research and artistry. - The team asks viewers to support creator-driven content as a bulwark against automation. ## 📖 Main Content - The video opens with a critique of “AI slop” and attention-driven platforms. - Kurzgesagt recounts its test of AI for research on brown dwarfs, finding many fabricated facts. - They show how misinformation loops arise when AI output becomes future AI input. - Real-world evidence supports the claim: bot traffic exceeds 50% of web activity, and AI news farms multiply rapidly. - Studies show hidden prompts in research papers influencing AI reviewers, and linguistic drift toward “AI-style” phrasing. - Meanwhile, Google’s AI summaries reduce outbound traffic to publishers. - Kurzgesagt commits to human-made verification, expert review, and creative integrity. ### 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=12) AI slop saturates platforms - “AI Slop is saturating the internet.” - Attention markets reward volume, not quality. #### ⏱️ [00:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=30) Bot traffic context - “Today about half of internet traffic is bots.” - Imperva 2025 reports automated traffic at 51%. #### ⏱️ [02:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=176) Confidently incorrect outputs - AI produced plausible yet unsourced facts. - Experts confirmed the same items were unreliable. #### ⏱️ [04:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=288) AI news site boom - “Well over 1200 confirmed AI News Websites.” - NewsGuard lists 1,271 active domains. #### ⏱️ [07:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=443) Hidden prompts in papers - White-text prompts tricked AI reviewers into positive bias. - Reported by Guardian, Washington Post, and arXiv. #### ⏱️ [08:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=512) Attention economics risk - Cheap slop could drown quality creators. - Google summaries divert reader attention away from sources. #### ⏱️ [09:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=599) Human-made commitment - “We would rather quit than make AI slop.” - Archive.org confirms publication on 2025-10-07. ## 📚 References (See the list above for all linked sources.) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - The creators tested AI research tools and found confident fabrications. - They warn that automation without accountability poisons creative ecosystems. ## 📰 Newsletter Kurzgesagt’s newest video, *AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel*, dissects how automation saturates feeds with mediocre, misleading content. They document factual drift in AI outputs, rising bot traffic, and hidden prompts in academic work. Supporting human-verified creativity is now a civic duty. Learn more via the [Imperva bot report](https://www.imperva.com/resources/resource-library/reports/2025-bad-bot-report/), [NewsGuard AI tracking](https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/ai-tracking-center), and [Pew’s AI summary study](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/). ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Publish “verify-first” research templates and livestream fact-checks. - Build provenance examples for documentation pipelines. #### OSPO - Define disclosure policies for AI-assisted content. - Require source provenance metadata similar to SBOMs. #### Community - Host contributor clinics on verifying sources. - Pair newcomers with fact-checking mentors. #### WordPress - Meta: strengthen citation validation in docs. - Polyglots: localize “verify-first” kits. - Core: add provenance in changelog automation. #### The WPCC - Fund fact-checking sprints and transparency dashboards. - Report microgrant outcomes with open ledgers. ### FAIR - Create covenants for transparent data and consented training. - Maintain open governance scorecards. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - AI summaries reduce clicks to sources. - Bot traffic will keep exceeding human traffic through 2026. - Hidden prompts will decline as journals tighten reviews. - Language drift will correlate with unacknowledged AI use. ### 📊 Methodology - Compare referral analytics before and after AI Overviews launch. - Track bot ratios via CDN and host telemetry. - Audit sample papers for LLM-style phrasing drift. ### ❓ Questions - Which creator sectors lose the most traffic? - What disclosure format best signals AI involvement? - Can provenance be automated without stifling creativity? ### 🔮 Future Research - Create datasets of “AI slop” patterns. - Test c - Summary: IT’S HERE ✨ The 10th edition of the Human Era Calendar: https://shop.kgs.link/12026 Join us in 12,026 to celebrate humanity’s connection to the stars with a year of cosmic stories and gorgeous artwork. Every purchase helps fund another year of kurzgesagt. Like everything we do, our calendar is human-made – no AI slop included. Thank you for being such a special part of our mission. Sources & further reading: https://sites.google.com/view/sources-aislop AI-generated content is flooding the internet, from videos and music to news and books. On top of that, generative AI is making false information look more convincing than ever. We're entering a new era of information overload, and figuring out what's real and what's not is becoming more and more of a challenge. While AI slop is slowly changing the internet as we know it, one thing is certain: kurzgesagt videos will always remain human-made. 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AI slop is saturating the internet, and things are becoming dramatic pretty quickly.In an online world where money is made with attention,fake users spread their slop in review sections, generate fake traffic, or poison discourse.AI has supercharged this and made slop much harder to spot. Today, about half of internet traffic is bots,the majority of them are used for destructive purposes.It's never been easier to make mediocre content – from the black hole of meaninglessness that is LinkedIn,low effort short videos just engaging enough to hypnotize kids and fry their attention spans,to endless soullessly rewritten books on Amazon.AI music is invading streaming platforms. Google AI is summarizing websites instead of sending traffic to them.On YouTube, new channels publish long-form videos multiple times a week with AI-generated thumbnails, voices, and scripts.True crime, video essays, science — no space is safe.We’re in the golden era of soulless slop. And sadly, actual creative human work is used to train these AI models.Every Reddit comment, original YouTube video, or human drawing on DeviantArt has been sold out to the AI companies.Or straight up stolen by them,without attribution or payment to the actual creators. Creative theft on a scale where it is impossible to protect against it,already putting loads of creatives’ work in danger – so AI companies can get rich.While this is sad and frustrating, what’s even worse is that generative AI truly has the potential to break the internet irreversibly. By making it harder and harder to tell what is true.At first, AI looked great!A Kurzgesagt script starts with basic research that is turned into a script. And then fact-checked in depth by 2-3 people.We try to confirm our info with what we deem trustworthy,ideally first-hand sources, ideally papers.Then we get 1-3 experts for input and critique.Fact-checking and compiling our sources alone takes around 100 hours per video.Of course, we make mistakes or oversimplify,and you can disagree with our conclusions — it’s unavoidable; we are only human after all.But it is fair to say that our process is extensive, and after a decade,we know what we are doing. When AI appeared, we were very excited.A mechanical brain able to super quickly collect information!So we went to work, and it looked amazing!And then we started fact-checking.We didn’t expect it to be perfect — but it was way worse than we thought. Confidently incorrect – AI is so bad at this.We’ll summarize and generalize our experiences over multiple projects and months,condensed into one fake project.A video about why brown dwarfs are the worst and should be ashamed of themselves. So we got all the pro accounts of all the AI models and got to work.Using deep research tools to create a summary and overview of all the information about the failed stars, brown dwarfs.And wow, it was great!Dozens of pages of outlines with unique information nuggets and links to sources!Then we started to look deeper.More than 80% of the info and factoids were pretty solid,and we could reconstruct where they were from.Wikipedia, papers, legit articles.What about the rest? It was great stuff, like the speed of brown dwarf superstorms,the nature of their insides, or how disappointed their moms are.But we could not find where the AI got this info from. Which is not automatically a bad sign – after all,the models contain pretty much all the internet and books ever written.So we asked experts for input – and they flagged the exact same facts,even asking where we found it.To fulfill its goal, to make us happy, the AI had invented or extrapolatedinformation to make brown dwarfs more interesting than they really are.Like a bad journalist making up details to make a story hit harder or fit a narrative. Now we wanted to know more and dove in deeper,reading the seemingly more solid sources the AI had given us in full.One was an article from a news site written by a human journalist– or was it?It had a very familiar structure and surely, purely coincidentally,read like what you get if a human slightly changes AI wording.An AI essay detection tool gave it a 72% match. So an AI article without sources was used as a credible source for AI research.Which makes sense since in 2025 there were already well over 1200 confirmed AInews websites publishing massive amounts of AI-generated misinformation and false narratives.This mix of correct, dubiously sourced and straight-up made-up information alsoleads AI to present really shoddy conclusions thatsound strong or novel but are often half-truths or misrepresentations.Oh well. We salvaged what we could and went back to the drawing board. And after a few weeks, it happened.By pure stupid chance, we saw a brown dwarf video popping up, by a relatively new channel.It had hundreds of thousands of views and was pretty good; nice footage, great editing!But we had seen the structure and rhythm before.And would you look at that? It contained all the brown dwarf facts we had flagged asunreliable or straight-up made up by AI.This is where the death of the internet begins.Now there is a proper source of brown dwarf misinformation online. When the next AI repeats the same research,It will find a transcript from a video with a lot of views. The misinformation is now true.It will spread.Even before AI, it was pretty hard to find the origin of facts that sound great but are not true — just watch our video about a hundred-year-old lie.As AI use goes on, it may become impossible to know what is true or not. The Most Corrosive Lie:The problem with AI is how trustworthy it seems; how it is correct enough to seem super smart and how incredibly confidently incorrect it is.Casually lying to your face, often very subtly.When you catch it lying, it immediately admits it, vows to never do it again.And then it does it again.As eloquent as current language models feel, there is nobody home.No greater intelligence or consciousness is talking back to you.Current AI is a very complex hammer that does not understand what it is doing or what nails are.But we are letting it add new shelves to the library of human knowledge.AI is changing quickly, so this may get better, but right now it's pretty grim. Way too many people blindly trust AI.Studies looked into the language of millions of scientific papers published before and after the rise of LLMs.They found an abrupt and sharp increase in the frequency of words that AIs like to use.So it seems clear that now, a significant portion of papers have been at least assisted by AI, usually without acknowledgement.And just in July 2025, it was discovered that a number of researchers had started to sneak hidden messages into their papers.In white text, or too small for the human eye, they prompted AIs to review them positively and not point out flaws.As more and more people are using AI carelessly, the library of human knowledge is getting less and less reliable.Which brings us to the last part: How are we using AI? And will Kurzgesagt survive the AI slop age?Will AI slop kill Kurzgesagt and artists?On the internet, there is only one truly valuable resource: human attention.If current trends continue, it is not that far-fetched that cheap slop content,stuff just good enough, will soak up the majority of human attention.It could make us dumber, less informed, our attention spans even worse,increase political divides, and make us neglect real human interaction.If AI eats the majority of the attention pie, channels like ours will become unfeasible.Or we’ll be forced to downsize or use AI ourselves to be able to compete. We don’t want to play this game. How will we use AI?Like the align tool in Adobe Illustrator.If you have a bunch of boxes and you want them to line up,you can do this manually, one by one.Or you can just select them, click “align,” and have them perfectly aligned in an instant.It’s the same with AI programming tools foranimation or using it as a faster Google alternative.AI is a helpful tool, but the creativity and integrity are still ours. So, dear internet, here is what we are offering to you:Kurzgesagt is made by humans, for humans, and it will remain that way.We will produce well-researched content and investa lot of time and our human creativity into our illustrations and animations.We put our creative soul into our work.We will continue to fact-check and discuss our research withhuman experts to give you the most trustworthy information that we can.When we make mistakes, they will be our mistakes.We would rather quit than make AI slop.But to go on, we need your support.Kurzgesagt is almost 70 full-time people and a lot of freelancers on top.This is a lot of salaries, software licenses, laptops, rent, and coffee.There is a way you can help us keep this human-made project alive! It’s the 12,026 Human Era Calendar – designed to fill your home witha year's worth of kurzgesagt art – but it’s much more than that.It’s an ode to humanity and human ingenuity.This calendar reframes time itself by starting not 2,000,but 12,000 years ago – at the dawn of human civilization.This way, 10,000 more years of our shared past and incredible achievements of our ancestorsbecome part of our timeline. You can use it just like a regular calendar – but it could change howyou see your place in history and how far we’ve all come as a species. This time we’ve collected 12 inspiring stories about our special connection to the stars – from the first creatureto ever glance up at the night sky, to ancient models of our cosmos, way into humanity's future among the stars.Each vibrant illustration is printed on high-quality paper with plenty ofspace to plan your days or record your adventures in the year 12,026.And because this is our 10-year calendar anniversary, we’ve gone all out. We created the first-ever kurzgesagt artbook: a vibrant, jam-packed collection of everycalendar illustration we’ve ever made. That’s 120 pages, and 10 years of kurzgesagt art in one giant book.It’s also packed with behind-the-scenes sketches, stories, and fun facts from the kurzgesagt team. Just like our videos, our products aren’t churned out by a soulless algorithm.They’re made with love by real humans, who spend countless hours researching, illustrating, and designingthings that we hope you’ll love. So if you value real, human-made content overAI Slop: Join us and our global community ofBirbs who get the calendar every year and help us keep kurzgesagt afloat. Together we’ll ride out the slop wave. The calendar and artbook are available now, only while supplies last., AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, 01k724gckn5qvf1pq8t5c5ksty.