Since November 2022, the proliferation of generative AI has had significant effects on the modern workforce.

81.2% of long-form LinkedIn posts were classified "Likely AI" in July 2026, up from roughly half in late 2024

One of the consequences, however, is this concept of AI slop.

But I want to challenge this narrative.

I want to challenge why we label it as AI slop, when it is just the lazy output of lazy people.

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If you were to go into the workplace and you produced rubbish output for your work, you would literally get fired.

And once that took place, that would be the end of it.

You wouldn't hear any more.

But it seems that people like to make a lot of noise saying, "this is AI slop, and this is that, and this is this".

More content is being produced and disseminated than ever before.

The problem with this is that models need to be trained on updated data inputs.

And as we compound that same problem, new things have had to evolve, like watermarking and making sure that there's a level of authenticity.

At an event back at the Australian Computer Society in 2024, I raised the question about IP infringement.

There wasn't an answer to that.

In fact, people hadn't thought about it.

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But I want to go back to a step before that.

Who creates the slop?

And the slop is, unfortunately, people.

We've seen this through the proliferation of social media.

Cat videos on YouTube.
Dancing memes on TikTok.
Food and holiday snaps on Instagram.

Do we care?

Yet people seem to want to have such an opinion on social, whereas in reality, one would just ignore it and turn the other cheek.

And now we have to have buttons and comments and opinions about somebody else's work.

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I'd like to offer an alternative.

Rather than critiquing somebody else's content, how about you critique your own?

How effective is your creative?
How effective is your positioning?
How effective is your messaging?
How effective is the entire package?

Because whilst it's easy to point the finger the other way, there's usually four fingers coming straight back.

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Whilst we live in this world where content will proliferate, and we will compound content on top of content, we unfortunately don't have a short-term solution to improve quality.

Yet quality is a subjective concept.

One person's trash is another's treasure.

The next time you hit that AI slop button, wonder who's done that to you.

And would you get offended?

What digital trash did you litter in your wake?