A new study by Kapwing shows that the vast amount of videos circulating on YouTube are brain-rotten content, or “AI slop,” a collective term for low-quality AI-generated content designed to increase views rather than provide real value.
Kapwing researchers tested this by creating a new YouTube account and tracking the first 500 videos recommended by the platform. Of those, 104 videos, or about 21%, were classified as AI slop, and 165 videos, or about 33%, fell into the broader “brain rot” category.
Brainrot contains repetitive, bizarre, or hypnotic clips that are easily viewed but lack substance. Taken together, the findings suggest that a significant portion of what new users see is automated content rather than works created by human creators.
How much AI slop is YouTube actually serving?
The scope of such content goes far beyond a few odd recommendations. Kapwing also analyzed trending YouTube channels in multiple countries and found 278 channels made entirely of AI slop spread across the world's top 100 rankings.
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These channels are not small. In total, they have amassed billions of views and millions of subscribers, translating into tens of millions of dollars in estimated annual advertising revenue. Some areas are particularly notable. In Spain, the AI Slop Channel has a combined subscriber count of over 20 million people, more than the combined subscribers of the United States and Brazil.
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South Korean slop channels have generated over 8.45 billion views in total, and India's largest AI slop channel alone has over 2 billion views. These rankings show that the AI tilt is not limited to one market, but spread across the globe.
Why is it spreading so quickly?
The problem is not about individual creators, but about the incentives built into recommendation algorithms. AI-generated videos are cheap to create, can be uploaded at scale, and are often optimized to stimulate curiosity and endless scrolling.
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New users are especially vulnerable because the algorithm has no viewing history to guide its recommendations. For YouTube, the findings raise uncomfortable questions. If one in five early recommendations were AI slop videos, it could change the way users experience YouTube before they even find the creators they actually want to watch.
YouTube has rolled out tools designed to curb deepfakes, but hopes the platform will offer better controls to limit AI slop, as TikTok already does. According to a report by Amazon Web Services (AWS) researchers, 57% of the internet may already be AI sludge.
This is why DuckDuckGo provides tools to filter out low-quality AI content. On the other hand, some tools like Slop Evader go further by restoring the web to the state it was in before generative AI took over.
As AI tools make it easier to flood platforms with synthetic media, the challenge is whether engagement alone continues to drive what new viewers see first.
