1 in 5 YouTube Shorts is AI slop now – and Americans are eating it up

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• A new study shows AI slop makes up more than 20% of YouTube.
• Brainrot, or poor quality content, makes up 33%.
• There's no incentive for creators to try to lessen AI slop.

If you feel like you're seeing a lot more AI-generated slop on YouTube, you're right.

According to a study from video-editing service Kapwing, more than 20% of the Shorts content on YouTube is AI slop, or “careless, low-quality content” made with AI and designed solely to farm views and subscriptions. The study showed that 33% is what's called brainrot, or “compulsive, nonsensical, low-quality video content” (that's often generated with AI).

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To conduct the study, Kapwing took the top 100 trending YouTube channels in every country and noted which ones were AI-generated. It then used a social media analytics tool to track the overall views, subscriber count, and estimated yearly revenue for those channels to determine their popularity. 

It also created a new YouTube account to see how much AI slop was offered up among the first 500 Shorts.

In theory, an algorithm-free account should be a good overview of YouTube content at large, since there aren't any personalized recommendations yet.

How YouTube's algorithm embraces AI

In the scenario with a totally new account, it took 16 Shorts before YouTube served one that was AI slop. From there, though, it was a fairly steady stream, as 104 of the first 500 videos, or 21%, were low-quality, AI-generated. Another 165 of the first 500 videos, or 33%, fell into the brainrot category.

On a global scale, Spain was the largest consumer of AI slop, with more than 20 million people subscribing to trending AI channels. Egypt took second place, with the US in third. The most popular AI channel, Kapwing found, is Bandar Apna Dost, an Indian channel with 2.07 billion views. It brings in an estimated $4.25 million a year.

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Of course, YouTube only serves up what it sees as popular or engaging, so people must be watching this style of AI video. When you consider that for creators, AI generators mean very low-cost or even no-cost content, it's not hard to see why there's been a sudden rise. And if YouTube reinforces that by pushing the videos and rewarding creators, the rise will only continue.

Many platforms, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) and Pinterest, are taking steps to label content, and some AIs, like Gemini, can now detect whether or not a video was made by AI. As long as users keep consuming it, though, there's no incentive for creators or platforms to try to lessen AI slop.