What is AI slop?

AI slop is content that's been made with AI, is typically low quality, and is often published in bulk without a lot of human thought put into it. According to Merriam-Webster, which picked "slop" as its 2025 Word of the Year, slop is "digital content of low quality produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." The problem isn't that AI was used. It's that nobody added anything a reader needed.

What does AI slop mean?

AI slop is AI-generated content that exists because it was cheap to produce, not because someone had something to say. It is named after slop, the food that's fed to pigs, and the image fits: a lot of it, all mixed together, none of it chosen with care.

There are two core characteristics of AI slop. The first is volume: it is mass-produced, often using the same prompt each time. The second, and perhaps more important, is that the content has little substance. Individual sentences within a piece of AI slop may appear correct and grammatical, but ask what the content as a whole tells you and the answer is close to nothing.

Is all AI-written content slop?

Is a post that's been written with the help of ChatGPT AI slop? No, not if you then read over the whole thing, cut it and replaced parts with your own examples. Slop is what you get when ChatGPT's draft is also the final post. The test is whether a person with real knowledge shaped what the reader ends up with.

What does AI slop look like on LinkedIn?

Slop is the generic, formulaic LinkedIn post that anyone in your industry could have written, the one you just want to swipe past. It's the same every time: a one-line hook like "I almost didn't share this.", short lines with a lot of white space, three numbered lessons, and a closing question to drive comments, such as "What would you add?" None of the lessons contain any verifiable details about what happened in the vaguely described story. More and more readers recognise the shape.

What does AI slop look like on blogs and SEO pages?

In the context of blogs, slop is the 2,000-word article that only answers a simple question in the sixth paragraph, after an introduction about how important the topic is. It repeats the same point under five headings, contains no new information, data, examples, or even opinions, and more often than not there are near-identical versions of it on the same site, one for each keyword variation. Google calls mass-producing pages like this to rank scaled content abuse, regardless of how they're created. Our guide to whether Google penalizes AI content quotes the policy.

What does AI slop look like in cold email?

In cold email, slop is the personalized message that isn't. It often starts something like "I came across your profile and was really impressed by your work at Acme," followed by a pitch that would fit any company. The telltale signs are a compliment that could apply to anyone, a generic value proposition, and the tone of a model that's being really, really polite. Prospects get a lot of these, and they can delete them in a heartbeat.

AI draft

Hi Mark, I came across your profile and was really impressed by your work at Acme. As a leader in the logistics space, I'm sure you're always looking for ways to streamline operations and drive growth. That's exactly why I wanted to reach out. Our platform helps companies like yours reduce shipping costs by up to 20% while improving delivery times. Would you be open to a quick 15-minute call next week to explore how we could support your goals?

After Zavus

Hey Mark, I noticed your profile and was really impressed by your work at Acme. Since your company is a leader in the logistics space, I wanted to reach out and see if you might be interested in learning how we might be able to help. We help companies like yours decrease their shipping costs by up to 20%, while improving delivery times. Would you be interested in hopping on a brief 15-minute call next week to discuss?

The rewrite has a more natural voice and drops clichéd phrases like "streamline operations and drive growth" and "support your goals", but it still doesn't say anything specific to Mark or Acme. A better voice can't fix that. The only person who can fix this email is the sender, by finding one real reason to write. Want to see how Zavus fits into outreach? Check out Zavus for sales.

What does AI slop look like in customer support?

In support, slop is the reply that sounds caring and solves nothing: "I completely understand how frustrating this must be, and I truly appreciate your patience," then a restatement of the customer's own problem and a link to a help article they've already read. Customers tend to notice it faster here than anywhere else, because they came with a specific problem and got a template back.

What about AI slop images?

Remember, images count too. Slop images are the glossy, oddly smooth stock-style pictures that fill feeds and blog headers: the same lighting, the same faces, hands and text that don't quite work. Just as with slop writing, they show that nobody was paying attention to details before publishing.

Why does AI slop hurt brands?

It hurts your brand. People notice AI slop, and it makes them less likely to trust your brand overall. In a Gartner survey of 1,006 US consumers, conducted in May and June 2026, 57% said that AI-generated content had made them less trusting of brand messaging overall, and 65% said brands are producing too much AI content in their marketing.

It's also a missed opportunity. Whenever you publish AI slop, you could have been publishing an effective piece of content instead, something specific enough to be remembered. Plus, because AI models polish writing toward the same habits, publishing AI slop will make your brand's content sound like everyone else's. We explain why in why your AI can't fix its own writing.

How do I avoid publishing AI slop? A 5-point check

Before you publish AI content, take a few minutes to run through these questions.

1. Could this content have been written by anyone else? You need to have at least one thing in your content that could only have come from you. That could be a statistic from your own work, a story about your customer, a mistake you made or even a statement of opinion that someone could disagree with. If every sentence could appear on a competitor's site, it's not ready.
2. Have you answered the question early? Find the first sentence where you give the reader something valuable. If it's below the fold, cut everything before it.
3. Have you double checked all the facts? AI will hallucinate with exactly the same confidence as it gives you correct answers. Double check all your facts, including names, numbers, dates, links and quotes, against the source. One invented stat does more damage than a plain sentence ever will.
4. Does this sound like it's been written by a human? Read your content out loud and check that it doesn't sound robotic. Look out for sentences that are all the same length, lists of three where two would do, and common AI words like "genuinely", "plenty of" and "for instance". In our own data, these appeared several times more often after AI polished human writing than in the human originals. See the full list in our guide to signs of AI writing.
5. Would you send this to someone you respect? Think of one specific person getting it. It could be a client, a colleague, a reader. If you'd be a bit embarrassed to send it to them, your readers are going to feel that too.

Is "sounding human" enough to stop it being slop?

No. Even if you fix the voice, an empty page that's well written will still be empty. Points 1 to 3 on the check matter more than point 4: sounding human will help good content come across more effectively, but it won't help if your content is thin.

The issue is, good content often gets lost because the voice is not right: you have something real to say, and the AI draft makes it read like everyone else's. That's what Zavus lets you fix. It's a separate rewriting model: you write your content in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or another agent, and then Zavus rewrites your finished draft so it reads like a person wrote it, while you keep the facts and the substance. You can read the pillar guide on making AI writing sound human, or see how marketing teams use it on Zavus for marketers.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the term AI slop come from?

"Slop" originally meant watery food scraps, often fed to pigs. It was already common online as a name for low-quality AI content when Merriam-Webster named it the 2025 Word of the Year.

Is AI slop bad for SEO?

Google doesn't penalize content for being made with AI. It does treat pages mass-produced mainly to manipulate rankings as spam under its scaled content abuse policy, and pages that aren't useful tend to perform worse anyway.

Can people really tell AI-written content?

Often, especially when it comes straight from the AI without edits. In Medianet's 2026 survey of 803 Australian journalists, 48% of those who use AI said they can "almost always" tell when a pitch was written by AI.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster names 'slop' 2025 Word of the Year as AI content explodes, Gulf News, December 2025
2. Gartner Marketing Survey Finds 35% of Consumers Rely on Influencers Less Due to AI, Gartner, September 2026
3. Journalists embrace AI despite rising concerns and threat to jobs, report reveals, Medianet, March 2026
4. Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central
5. AI writing tells 2026: methodology and data, Zavus research, November 2026