The term ‘AI slop’, meaning meaningless images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), is on the rise. The ‘shrimp Jesus’ that was a hot topic recently can be a variety of AI slop, and it’s analyzed that it will turn out to be a representative term of the AI era, following ‘web spam’.
Recently, major American media outlets have been reporting on AI slop. The Recent York Times introduced it last month, and the Washington Post covered it on the thirtieth (local time). Business Insider and CNN also joined the trend on the identical day.
Slop is the leftover food that farmers feed to their pigs. It means an inexpensive creation that does not look very tasty. Some AI-generated images which have recently turn out to be popular on the Web are following within the footsteps of ‘spam’, which was considered a typical piece of trash within the Web era.
There’s a jumble of bizarre and surreal images here. Following the shrimp Jesus, the image of ‘chicken Jesus’ with the face of Jesus attached to a fried chicken has turn out to be a meme, and recently, the ‘baby truck’ with dozens or lots of of babies appearing in a chaotic manner has turn out to be a hot topic.
A Twitter account called ‘AI Boomertrap’ has also appeared, which only collects and posts images like this.
Operator Khan Schoolcraft sarcastically said, “The image of a ‘tiger Jesus’ saving a stupendous flight attendant from a plane sinking within the mud, or a half-human, half-monkey hybrid being eaten alive by fire ants, are representative examples. People will say ‘beautiful’ or ‘nice’ after they see these.”
It’s well-known that this image foretells a ‘dead web’ where only AI is energetic. This time, the background of its appearance can be being discussed. It’s because AI learns human works and imitates them as learned.
“These images have a certain madness to them, but they’re balanced by a plain, realistic style,” said Jonathan Gilmore, a philosophy professor on the City University of Recent York.
He also analyzed that “this type of image is a significant issue in the present philosophy of art” and that “it penetrates what art means and what art should do for us.”
In other words, art is imagined to make people feel something, and AI Slop is achieving essentially the most certain success in essentially the most vulgar way. For instance, it continuously features popular themes reminiscent of religion, babies, puppies, and attractive people.
It is usually evaluated as an area where the technical terms ‘cringe’, meaning self-deprecation, and ‘kitsch’, meaning vulgarity, are well developed.
But artists who create artistic images using AI tools say there is a difference between AI slop and their very own work.
Polina Kosdada, a 45-year-old AI artist from Ukraine, describes AI slops as “dead images without ideas or messages.” In contrast, she calls generated images which might be imbued with the intention and depth of the artists “live images.”
There have also been indications that slop could have an actual impact on art. Mail, a researcher at Central European University, said, “Surrealism was once the exclusive domain of the geniuses of the time, but now, due to AI, it’s spreading indiscriminately and, conversely, causing fatigue.”
Professor Gilmore also said, “We value artistic endeavors which might be the product of struggle or overwhelming talent,” and “the mere incontrovertible fact that AI is very easy to provide signifies that it should soon turn out to be boring, let alone art.”
Business Insider also explored why these images, unlike spam messages, are flooding social media.
“Since these accounts are usually not often linked to fraudulent advertisements, we don’t specifically ban them on Meta,” he said. “Meta has also developed a picture generation AI and hopes to see it widely utilized.”
Reporter Im Dae-jun ydj@aitimes.com
