On Christmas Day, after the holiday hijinks had settled down, I—like millions of others—got on social media to “check in” with the world. A cute and heartwarming story about a guy paying for groceries for others at one of the Maine grocery stores popped up in my feed. Given the holiday season, it was the type of story that catches your eye: A regular person deciding to pay it forward. The story had personality and a little snark. Right up my GenX alley.
Now, being the chronically online fairly tech-savvy person that I am, I did a little poking around before deciding to share the story on the Black Girl in Maine Facebook page. While I wasn’t friends with the person who posted the story, his name sounded familiar. According to his profile, he was a local Maine-based artist, whose profile reads “God first. Neo-Pop/Street Artist. Writer. Music Producer. Blogger. Photo/Videographer. Ocean Life.” I scrolled his profile and clicked on the story that had popped up in my feed and saw we shared some FB connections. I clicked on the link to his Instagram page and saw that we shared some mutual friends, including one of my closest friends. At that point, I decided to share the heartwarming story because given the state of this country, we all could use reminders of our humanity and that we are all connected and many of us do still care.
Many people commented on the piece, appreciating the story and the sentiment but a few people said, “hey, I think this is AI.” At first, I brushed it off; I mean, come on, the guy is a local artist and writer. Why would he be using generative AI as a writer? On Facebook? That’s bananas. Then another person commented that they had run the story through a scan and it was showing as 80% AI. Another person chimed in to say that they thought the piece was also AI-assisted.
While I was disheartened to hear that the story might not all be his story, given that it had over 700 likes on my page and was shared 66 times, I figured I would just let it stand. I mean, who am I to yuck someone’s yum? The story was a mood-booster.
Then I came across a post this morning by author Rebecca Solnit and, well, it seems these harmless and heartwarming stories shared on Facebook aren’t always as harmless as we think, even when the person posting may have no ill intent. These stories are a new genre of AI slop, which generally involve emotionally touching or heroic stories. Stories that tend to gain a lot of traction. Sometimes the stories are lifted from others, or they are a mashup of truth, or just made up entirely. The thing is, these stories—this slop—is becoming big business, with Facebook paying creators in other countries to create said slop, which is then targeted toward U.S. users.
Meanwhile, actual writers such as me, who pour hours every day into writing, risk having our material scraped and repackaged to line someone else’s pockets and the pockets of the people whose operations and beliefs threaten us all.
I chose long ago not to participate in the Facebook creator program; I only use Facebook as a vehicle to market my work. Ideally, people would discover my work and then choose to subscribe to my Substack and or Patreon or at least drop some tips at my blog. It bothers me that I must use any of these social media platforms to hawk my wares but I also understand that—despite knowing for a decade that Facebook is an unsavory operator—it is one-stop shopping for people, especially my target demographic of 45-65 year olds, which is also Facebook’s key demographic. A demographic that is increasingly at risk for not knowing AI slop from reality. Hell, I fell for a story that might indeed not be fully truth or human-written, and I’m generally on guard for this kind of thing.
Given the state of the country, it might seem like those of us who rail against generative AI are just assholes. I mean, don’t we have bigger issues to worry about? The thing is, over the last year or two, generative AI has been foisted on us at a speed that should make us all take notice. We know that AI is resource heavy, resources that communities who house the AI data centers often can’t afford to have used up so readily and quickly. This isn’t yesterday’s Google search; it’s something that in the moment seems cool and fun but ultimately is reshaping society in a manner that should give us all pause. If you pause before using generative AI for no other reason, remember that none of the tech bros pushing us so eagerly toward generative AI appear to be ethical people.
More importantly, we are being pushed to use technologies that increasingly take us away from humanity. At a time when people are feeling lonely and disconnected, and always short on time, generative AI looks like another tool in our arsenal to navigate modern life. But is it?
According to a lot of people now, we no longer need humans to create art and thought—just let the machines scrape the previous work of actual humans and then recombine and recycle it before regurgitating it. Just disregard the humans that make life and spark beauty and thought. You can now use generative AI for love, companionship, and even mental health. But is that really a good thing? Do we want to give all those things and trust all those things from digital machines?
We are living in disturbing times when our individual choices may not seem like they matter. But they do. We can choose in our daily rounds to make choices that keep this humanity wheel going or not, and if enough of us do it, it can make a difference.
Just ask the folks at Target. Millions gave up shopping at Target after they rolled back their DEI initiatives and apparently, they aren’t having a good year. Not everyone has participated in the boycott, but enough have over a sustained period that it is affecting their bottom line. Is there any reason we can’t say no to generative AI photos of ourselves and choose to engage without the slop? Did you know that you can turn off the AI helpers that are now embedded in many applications?
I admit, I am heavily biased against generative AI. I am a writer and my eldest kid is a musician with a family who has been blessed to make a living as a musician. For those of us who create work from scratch, it’s hard to see generative AI favorably, especially as I recently discovered some of my work was lifted by an AI podcast. I don’t like thieves; I don’t like slop.
Bottom line is that creating a better world will take time and we won’t get there with sloppy shortcuts. Unlike a certain administration that is using generative AI in many different ways to further their evil, we should be able to tap into our collective inherent worth to do better.
Moving ahead, now that I know heartwarming AI slop is out there, I will try to do a better job of vetting things. I hope you will do the same; let’s not share AI slop if we can help it. Instead, let’s deepen our connections to one another and share the stories of true humanity in its messy imperfection.
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