A study found that more than 20% of the videos that YouTube's algorithm shows new users are “AI slop,” or low-quality AI-generated content designed to increase views.
Video editing company Kapwing looked at 15,000 of the world's most popular YouTube channels (top 100 from each country) and found that 278 of them contained only AI slop.
According to estimates, these AI slop channels collectively attract more than 63 billion views and 221 million subscribers, generating around $117 million (£90 million) in revenue each year.
The researchers also created a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slops. A third of the 500 videos were “brainrot,” a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content created to monetize attention.
The findings are a snapshot of the rapidly expanding industry that saturates major social media platforms, from X to Meta to YouTube, defining a new era of decontextualized, addictive, and international content.
A Guardian analysis this year found that nearly 10% of YouTube's fastest-growing channels were powered by AI, racking up millions of views despite the platform's efforts to curb “inauthentic content”.
The channels discovered by Kapwing are distributed and viewed around the world. In Spain, 20 million people, almost half of the country's population, follow trending AI channels. The AI channel has 18 million followers in Egypt, 14.5 million in the US, and 13.5 million in Brazil.
Bandar Apna Dost, the most watched channel in the study, is based in India and currently has 2.4 billion views. It follows the adventures of an anthropomorphic rhesus macaque and a muscular character modeled after the Incredible Hulk who fights demons and travels in a helicopter made of tomatoes. Kapwing estimated the channel could earn up to $4.25 million. The owner did not respond to inquiries from the Guardian.
Technology and digital rights researcher Rohini Lakshane said Bandar Apna Dost's popularity is probably due to its absurdity, hyper-masculine metaphors and the fact that it has no plot, which makes it approachable to new audiences.
Singapore-based Pouty Frenchie has 2 billion views and appears to be targeting children. This piece chronicles the adventures of a French bulldog. We drive to candy forests and eat crystal sushi, often with the soundtrack of children's laughter. Kapwing estimates it has annual revenue of nearly $4 million. US-based Cuentos Facinantes also appears to target children with its cartoon stories and has 6.65 million subscribers, making it the channel with the most subscribers in our study.
Meanwhile, Pakistan-based The AI World features AI-generated short stories about Pakistan's devastating floods with titles such as “Poor People,” “Poor Families,” and “Flood Kitchen.” Many of these videos are set to the soundtrack “Relaxing Rain, Thunder & Lightning Ambience for Sleep.” The channel itself has 1.3 billion views.
It's hard to say exactly how important these channels are compared to the vast amount of content that already exists on YouTube. The platform does not publish information such as annual views or how many of those views come from AI content.
But behind the macabre scenes of candy forests and disasters is a growing, semi-structured industry of people using AI tools to find new ways to monetize the world's most powerful platforms.
“Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord and message boards are filled with people exchanging tips and ideas. [and] We’re selling courses on how to make slop that’s attractive enough to make money,” said Max Read, a journalist who has written extensively about AI slop.
“They have something called a niche. One that I recently noticed was an AI video of a pressure cooker exploding on a stove.”
Although AI developers are everywhere, Reid said many of them come from English-speaking countries with stronger internet connections, where median wages are lower than what they can earn on YouTube.
“Mostly in middle-income countries like Ukraine, we have a lot of people in India, Kenya, Nigeria, we have a good number in Brazil. Same goes for Vietnam. It's a place where you can go online and access social media sites relatively freely,” he said.
Becoming an AI slop creator isn't always easy. First, Reed said YouTube and Meta's creator programs aren't always transparent about who is being paid and how much for their content. For another, the AI slop ecosystem is full of scammers. That is, people who sell tips and courses on how to create viral content, and they often make more money than the AI slop producers themselves.
But for some at least, that's what life is all about. And while there are always new ideas popping up that grab attention, like exploding pressure cookers, human creativity is far less important when it comes to advances in AI than the metas and algorithms that deliver content on YouTube.
“These websites, by their very nature, are huge A/B testing machines,” Reid says. “You can find almost anything you can think of on Facebook. So the question is how do you find what's working and how do you scale it? How can you make 10 of them?”
A YouTube spokesperson said, “Generative AI is a tool, and like any other tool, it can be used to create both high-quality and low-quality content. We remain focused on connecting our users with high-quality content, no matter how it's created. All content uploaded to YouTube must comply with our Community Guidelines, and we will remove content if we determine it violates our policies.”
