the ai slop argument is costing you
If you're someone complaining about AI generated slop, almost to a degree where you take pride in doing so. You will most likely end up on the losing side of history.
We are all humans and I understand why you feel this way. It can be insecurity about the technological shift, the curse of expertise, or the want to maintain tribal identity with the rest of your criticizing peers.
But here is what you are missing.
There are people generating a lot of crap right now on the internet. And for anyone who has spent years building a craft and takes pride in doing so, it must appear like a joke.
Yes, there is bad AI content everywhere right now. But that is what the early days of any new medium look like. AI slop will always exist, similar to bad influencers or useless podcasters. The question is what happens to the people who push past it.
Today, people who have been putting up with all the non-determinism of AI, but still managing to generate good content, are building something that you cannot replicate from the outside.
Yes, consistency is an issue. Outputs are unpredictable, shots drift, characters shift. But the people who have been trying to generate high quality content using AI are adding the most value to the ecosystem, by reporting bugs, edge cases and methods. The critics sitting in the corner are not adding any value.
Serious creators are injecting feedback into the system, continuously pushing the limits with prompting techniques, workflows and more. This is a deeply indeterministic system, and their ability to navigate it and still bring a good output is precisely why they will become dominant players in the new world. With every new model or tool, they will grow their expertise in a way that will be difficult to replicate by late entrants or critics.
Look at the newer models, Seed Dance 2.0 or Kling. They are a thousand times better than what we had in 2023. The trajectory is not slowing down.
The value will shift toward anyone who can either democratize high quality content generation or push the boundaries of quality with custom workflows.
That shift has a cost for the people who waited. Anyone generating slop will either not capture value or lose all authority in the next 2-5 years.
Take someone like Joe Rogan, arguably more influential than most major media outlets today. But in 2010, he was cringe to those same outlets. He put in the real effort anyway. He improved. He got rewarded.
This pattern follows in every technological shift, the internet, social media, podcasting. The people who enter early, are comfortable with low status, and put in real effort to improve are the ones who get rewarded heavily. The cringe becomes the winning argument.
Serious creators, those on the margins, will come to control the center. And those in the center will make room for them, willingly or otherwise.
Right now, many people are mocking AI-generated content and calling it slop. But eventually the script will flip. The creators who are deeply engaged with the craft, the people who truly love the game, will move to the center of a new industry.
The door is still open. But ask anyone trying to become an influencer today how hard that is.