Babies trapped in space, zombie football stars and cat soap operas: welcome to YouTube in the era of AI video.
Nearly one in 10 of the fastest growing YouTube channels globally are showing AI-generated content only, as breakthroughs in the technology spur a flood of artificial content.
Guardian analysis of data from the analytics firm Playboard shows that out of the top 100 fastest growing channels in July this year, nine were showing purely AI-generated content.
The offerings include channels featuring bizarre narratives such as a baby crawling into a pre-launch space rocket, an undead Cristiano Ronaldo and melodramas featuring humanised cats. AI video generation has surged amid the release of powerful tools such as Google’s Veo 3 and Elon Musk’s Grok Imagine.
The channels have millions of subscribers in total, including 1.6 million for the space-stranded infant and 3.9 million for Super Cat League, which features human-like cats having affairs and, among one of many bizarre scenes, the felines shooting down and dismembering an eagle.
Many of these videos qualify as “AI slop”, which refers to low-quality, mass-produced content that is surreal, uncanny or simply grotesque. But some contain a brief, rudimentary plot – in a sign of the growing sophistication of AI-generated content.
YouTube has tried to stem the slop deluge by blocking the sharing of advertising revenue with channels that post repetitive and “inauthentic” content – a policy targeted at AI content.
“All content uploaded to YouTube is subject to our community guidelines – regardless of how it’s generated,” said a spokesperson for YouTube, which is owned by Google’s parent company.
After being contacted by the Guardian about the channels – which included channels in the fastest growing list for June – YouTube said it had removed three of them from the platform and blocked a further two from receiving advertising income. It did not specify which channels had been sanctioned.
One expert said AI video generators herald the next wave of internet “enshittification”, a term first used by the British-Canadian author Cory Doctorow. Coined in 2022, Doctorow used it to describe the decline in quality of users’ online experiences, as platforms prioritise profit over offering high-quality content.
“AI slop is flooding the internet with content that essentially is garbage,” said Dr Akhil Bhardwaj, an associate professor at the University of Bath’s school of management. “This enshittification is ruining online communities on Pinterest, competing for revenue with artists on Spotify and flooding YouTube with poor quality content.”
“One way for social media companies to regulate AI slop is to ensure that it cannot be monetised, thus stripping away the incentive for generating it.”
Ryan Broderick, the author of the popular Garbage Day newsletter on internet culture, is scathing about the impact of AI video, writing last week that YouTube has become a “dumping ground for disturbing, soulless AI shorts”.
Instagram’s Reels video feature is also flooded with AI content. On the platform, a video of various celebrities’ heads attached to animal bodies has gained 3.7m views, starring the “Rophant” (Dwayne Johnson and an elephant) and “Emilla” (Eminem on a gorilla).
On TikTok, many AI-generated videos have gone viral, including a video of Abraham Lincoln vlogging his ill-fated trip to the opera and cats competing in an Olympic diving event. However, the Lincoln and cat Olympic videos are more in the spirit of the internet’s pre-slop era of playful wit.
Instagram and TikTok said they require all realistic AI-content to be labelled. Videos suspected to contain AI from these channels were cross-checked with deepfake detection service provider Reality Defender.
The channels featuring AI videos for July are: