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Lost in the slop layer - by Brian Merchant

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One of the more perplexing things about the AI bubble is how relatively little we have to show for it. Mostly, it’s chatbots, some coding automation, and slop. A lot of slop. You can spend hours reading through eye-popping Nividia earnings reports and lengthy columns expounding on the transformative powers of the technology and analysts’ takes on what may be the biggest bubble of our generation. That’s to say nothing of the breathless proclamations of tech executives, of course, or the federal government’s own enthusiastic overtures. But then you flip on Saturday Night Live and the first sketch they run after the monologue reminds you that a lot of the general public’s experience of AI is actually more like the one depicted here: That is, as slop. Encountering awful AI slop (and startups with skin-crawling pitches like ‘what if we use AI to reanimate dead family members’), is an experience universal enough that Glen Powell acting out Sora-esque output gets top billing at SNL. Slop has

Lost in the slop layer How AI has encrusted our culture and social sphere in a sedimentary layer of slop. Brian Merchant Nov 24, 2025 188 24 35 Share One of the more perplexing things about the AI bubble is how relatively little we have to show for it. Mostly, it’s chatbots, some coding automation, and slop. A lot of slop. You can spend hours reading through eye-popping Nividia earnings reports and lengthy columns expounding on the transformative powers of the technology and analysts’ takes on what may be the biggest bubble of our generation. That’s to say nothing of the breathless proclamatio

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