I find AI slop enjoyable. That bothers me.
We live in a difficult era. AI is developing at a breakneck pace and is consuming our world’s resources as it goes. You can no longer get memory or graphics cards, everything is getting expensive, and despite all the green initiatives we still have a growing energy crisis because data centers are sucking up everything.
And yet it also helps enormously. By supporting and amplifying my work with AI I go so much faster. The automations that roll out of AI at an unprecedented pace for both small and large tasks make my days so much more effective and meaningful that I shudder at the thought of ever having to stop using AI.
Then there’s the discussion of whether AI is making us dumber. There is research suggesting this appears to be the case. I think it’s more nuanced than that. There are people who outsource their decisions and understanding to AI, and there are people who use it to amplify or accelerate themselves. For me (very scientifically grounded, I know), those are two very separate topics. I have the sense that I actually think more and absorb less / just survive in the rush of everyday life…
That makes AI a powerful and wonderful, but very mixed gift. The biggest problem most people have with AI is actually something different: it is the encroachment on the arts. Music, drawings, stories, articles and so on, made by AI.
Aside from the fact that AI stands on our shoulders here — AI can only produce “new” work through the effort of artists, writers, and people working across all these fields. That new work is then a kind of desired average of everything that came before it. Creating is therefore, for many people, little more than an illegal copy of someone else’s work.
And there’s yet another problem on top of that: AI was previously trained on data produced by humans. The internet is now, however, full of things generated by AI (dismissively referred to by many as AI Slop). This means that current AIs are increasingly being trained on AI-generated data as well. People consider this an important turning point in history.
AI slop is therefore inferior, less original, less fresh, less creative, and so on. Yet I find that assessment lazy in many cases. AI is also a tool. A carpenter doesn’t bravely hammer nails into the wall with their bare hands — they use a hammer for that. I personally see AI primarily as a tool. And that is where it gets complicated. When I ask AI to produce an original piece of art, that is explicitly different for me from when I ask AI to adjust or enrich a piece of art that exists in my head and that I am in the process of shaping. In that case, AI has gone from being a replacement brain to being my hammer.
Many people will fundamentally disagree with this. I understand that very well, but it still feels this way to me.
I also find it amusing when people apologetically mention that they used AI for something. I appreciate that you mention it, but you don’t need to apologize. The carpenter doesn’t confess that they secretly used a saw and a bit of sandpaper. That is simply the correct use of tools to achieve a higher quality result.
For me, AI slop is therefore everything where AI acted as a replacement brain, rather than as a tool.
The crisis
With all that groundwork laid, now to the point where I need to poke holes in my own argument — the crisis in my convictions: I have stumbled upon a very large pile of AI slop. I would like to say it isn’t that bad and that AI is mostly being used as a tool here, but I fear it would be hopeless to try to defend that. And yet I have it on constantly: AI-generated music to work to.
When I’m working, especially on tasks requiring concentration, I like music that doesn’t distract my attention. No vocals, no jarring transitions, but interesting enough to stay present (which rules out elevator music) and to make sure I’m hearing the music more than my surroundings. This helps me enormously, because my instinct is to follow every interesting conversation around me at the expense of my work. Music is my firewall against distraction and helps me reach and maintain a Deep Work state.
It turns out AI excels in this area. My genres, my instruments, my just-below-the-foreground preference. YouTube is full of it and I can’t get enough. Not to enjoy, not during a drive, or for my love of music, but to work to. In that context it is genuinely pleasurable for me and it fills a real gap — I can find music to work to in traditional forms, but very little. There are few artists focused on making music that doesn’t get in the way of not listening to it closely.
AI, on the other hand (a group of people, to be more precise), is now producing mountains of content in this genre. And they’re helping me a great deal: repetition — something that diminishes the effect — is decreasing sharply. I have more and more unfamiliar, unobtrusive music. Which means I have more music I haven’t heard 100 times already.
So sorry, it’s actually quite enjoyable… What do others think?
Here is my own AI slop playlist for anyone who wants to give it a listen.