Is it AI Slop or Humans Forgetting What's Important?
Philippe Beaudoin · December 14, 2025
First off: I’m not blaming anyone. In good faith, I can’t. When ChatGPT improved its image generator, last year, I asked it to turn a picture of my kids “Miyazaki style”. The result moved me.
Then…
Then I used the picture on a LinkedIN post, thinking: “Cool! This could increase engagement!”
Fast-forward a year and the word “AI slop” is on everybody’s lips. I look back at that Miyazaki picture and feel a bit shitty… slop in the pre-slop days, I want to say. But if I think harder about the real issue, I end up with a thought that has nothing to do with AI but has everything to do with me.
WTF do I care about engagement for???
Engagement, ROI, and even job numbers are only a proxy. A proxy to something deeper, that seems hard to look into. As if peeking into an abyss.
I’ve always known the abyss was there. You know it too. Its infinite depth brushed the edge of your consciousness in these dark nights where you dared to ask the question “what is this all about?”. Maybe you were afraid of looking too hard. Maybe you were afraid you would find an emptiness you could never fill.
I think the term “AI slop” is born from that fear.
Because AI, the way we’re using it now, is the ultimate optimization device. It is the fast track highway towards all of these questions:
WTF do I care about engagement for? WTF do I care about ROI for? WTF do we care about jobs so much?
It’s a fast track highway to the abyss we’re afraid of, so we take the first exit. We remove ourselves from the equation and blame it on the thing doing the optimization. We refuse to look at us. Us, who choose what to optimize for. And so we call it…
AI slop.
I’ve decided I wouldn’t. I heed Camus. We must imagine Sysyphus happy. And you know what I found? I found that the abyss is not as scary as I once thought. That if I stop thinking too much about any metric, and if I just let myself be in the moment, surrounded by people I love, then… it just feels right. No need to overthink it.
That’s how I write my posts nowadays. No AI. No engagement seeking, no agenda, no revision process. I sit down — today in the waiting area of gate C46 in Vancouver airport — and I let my words flow. A few re-reads to correct any typo and I let it into the world. Trusting it may reach a couple of the folks I love, or whom I may come to love if they read my words and reach back with the same movement. The movement that starts with “Here’s how I feel…”
And those of you who think I’ve gone all kumbaya? It’s ok. I’ll wait. 😊