By Aisha Down
Publication Date: 2025-12-27 17:00:00
More than 20% of the videos YouTube’s algorithm shows new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.
Video editing company Kapwing examined 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in each country – and found that 278 of them contained only AI stuff.
Together, these AI slop channels have more than 63 billion views and 221 million subscribers and are estimated to generate 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 in its feed were AI slop. A third of the 500 videos were “brain rot,” a category that includes AI hoaxes and other low-quality content designed to monetize attention.
The results are a snapshot of a rapidly growing industry that is flooding major social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualized, addictive…
