More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.
The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.
Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.
The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop. One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention.
The findings are a snapshot of a rapidly expanding industry that is saturating big social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualised, addictive and international.
Do you have any recommendations?
FreeTube
Invidious had been good to me
I have a pretty good time with New Pipe but I’ve heard others haven’t had the good experience I have.
Freetune works for me, on a roku I use playlet, on android there are a few others.
There was a good recommendation on here the other day, but I didn’t write it down.
You also can create playlists in various media players like VLC.
I would highly encourage whoever you really like to head over to nebula. I know paying seems not great but they do get a portion of that money and there are no ads.