Take a look at that picture above.

At first glance, it looks like a sweet, wholesome moment: a proud child sitting beside an intricate sandcastle, with smiling adults applauding in the background.

But look closer…

That sandcastle isn’t just impressive – it’s impossible.

The spirals, arches, and towers stretch into strange, dreamlike shapes.

This is what’s known as AI SLOP…

It’s the kind of uncanny, nonsensical imagery that’s flooding social media feeds right now.

At first you might laugh it off as a silly oddity, but the sheer volume of these images – and the motives behind them – make it worth paying attention to.

Because AI slop is everywhere, and more of it is being generated every second.

The term usually refers to low-effort, generic, or poorly rendered images that come from AI image or video generators.

I’ve started to notice more and more of these appearing in ads and click bait.

For example, a puppy cowers in a lion’s enclosure (along with the line “you won’t believe what happened next”)…

It’s so obviously AI, right?

And yet these sorts of images are everywhere.

….A plate of food that looks like melted plastic (with the caption: “Doctors are shocked! Never eat THIS again…”)

….Images of sad old people (with links to people selling wills or funeral services)

Now I’ve nothing against using AI images.

After all, I use them at the top of What Really Makes Money emails to illustrate the content in a fun way.

But what happens when people are trying to connect with friends, family and trusted businesses on networks like Facebook and yet they mainly see this stuff?

What happens when people can no longer trust what they see, because it’s AI masquerading as a real photo?

I started digging around online and found that this was  a question lots of people are asking.

Why AI Images Are Taking Over

I found a great YouTube video investigation by Christophe Haubursin, a journalist and video creator, into why so many people are seeing AI slop on social media these days.

He points out that over the last few years, the algorithmically suggested images on Facebook users’ feeds have become more bizarre..

“Elderly people celebrating impossibly ancient birthdays,

Artists standing next to intricate woodcarving creations…

Jesus appearing in front of airplane cabin crews…”

Yes, these things can be fun… disturbing… funny

Even thought-provoking…

But what is the deeper point of them?

What is the aim behind mass producing them?

Who’s making money from them?

In his video, Haubursin finds it difficult to talk to anyone who is generating large quantities of these AI images.

But he does talk about a man behind an account on X which shares the worst examples of AI slop.

He tells him that AI-generated images are specifically designed to generate clicks and engagement by eliciting strong emotional reactions.  They are often patriotic, nostalgic, cutesy, or play on our sense of outrage and injustice.

Other forms of AI slop capitalise on a viral image and try to reproduce it across the internet.

For instance, there might be a GENUINE photo of a child sitting beside an intricately carved sandcastle that gets millions of likes.

So an AI generator might spot this viral success and generate hundreds of copycat images to flood the internet.

These types of automated AI generators tune into whatever is trending right now, using the most basic settings and prompts.

Which means that the images start as close copies of the original….

But then the results drift into increasingly bizarre territory as more elements are added and the idea drifts into the realm of the weird.

Which means you end up with these crazy AI photos all over the internet.

And some people are earning money from it.

How Slop Makes Cash

It seems like a lot of this stuff is coming from China and other countries in East Asia.

By generating clicks through these emotion-stimulating images, people create traffic for websites that they can then sell for a profit.

The money that can be made from viral images might only be relatively small but it is higher than the average salary in some countries.

You also have entrepreneurs who then sell this AI image-generating method as a business opportunity, leading to more AI slop.

And while that’s fine in the sense that anyone has the right to try and make money online…

It’s also having an effect on the wider internet…

Because it is killing off the original promise of social media and blogs as places to connect with real people.

AI images are now beginning to dominate Facebook, to the point where they make up a third of most feeds.

Often these are false and misleading, designed to manipulate unwitting people into following certain accounts or clicking on certain websites.

Now, you might think that AI images are so obvious, you’d never be duped…

We tend to think of mutant hands with 5 fingers… cats with 3 eyes… angles that don’t make sense… gibberish text fragments.

But this isn’t always the case.

For instance, this week I was amused to read a story about a house that was on sale for £350,000, whose vendor used AI to alter the property’s appearance.

They removed a hairdresser’s shop from next door and replaced it with a fake shrubbery, then touched up the house frontage to make it look far more plush than it was in reality.

And this AI element wasn’t obvious from the photo at all.

So we are entering an era where AI is creating obviously fake images in massive volumes… while also creating misleading images that seem absolutely real.

But what does this mean for you?

Being Human Has Never Been More Important

Look, I love AI.

It’s a brilliant tool for overcoming obstacles like a lack of writing skill, design flair or spare time.

But if you just use a lazy prompt to generate images and videos without thought or care, you’ll only add to the slop – and this not only has a negative effect on the internet,  but on your chances of making money.

When people’s feeds are 30% slop, they stop trusting what they see on social media. They stop engaging with random links and pages. And they start looking for sources they can actually believe.

Which is where the opportunity lies.

I’ve said this before, but being human and unique has never been more valuable.

Instead of pumping out low-effort images or fake content, you can position yourself as a voice people can rely on.

There are a few ways to do that:

• Create an email newsletter – Unlike social feeds, a personal, direct newsletter doesn’t compete with an endless churn of slop. People must choose to subscribe and their inbox space is far more valuable than their X or Facebook feed.
• Use personal storytelling – AI slop is generic by nature. It doesn’t have your unique life experience, humour, or personality quirks. Even a small anecdote will make your content stand out from the auto-generated sludge.
• Make AI content your own – when you use AI to create digital products, input lots of specific details that tailor it to your personality and the profile of your target customer. That means feeding it plenty of relevant details and samples of your voice so that what it produces is a version of you.
• Focus on niches – AI slop is designed to appeal to the masses by being cute, nostalgic, patriotic and shocking for maximum exposure. But you should create content for a niche audience where you can focus on their specific needs, desires, fears and goals. Drill down into the everyday experiences of the people who might buy your products or subscribe to your services.

As AI slop factories increase, I’m convinced that personal, hyper-specific digital businesses will boom.

Increasingly, people will pay attention to smaller-scale human voices on the internet.

That’s to your advantage as a solo entrepreneur looking to compete in the noisy internet.

Because it doesn’t really cost anything to be unique.

What do you think? Let me know…