📰 AI News: AI “Slop” Is Flooding YouTube, And Kapwing Just Put Numbers On It

📝 TL;DR

Kapwing’s new “AI Slop Report” estimates that roughly a third of a new YouTube user’s Shorts feed is low quality AI content. A small group of AI driven channels is racking up billions of views and millions in ad revenue, while thoughtful human made videos fight to stay visible.

🧠 Overview

The report looks at how much “AI slop” and “brainrot” has crept into YouTube, and which countries and channels are benefitting most from it. AI slop is defined as careless, low effort auto generated video made to farm views or push opinions, while brainrot is compulsive, nonsensical content that leaves you feeling mentally drained.

The big picture, low quality AI video is no longer a fringe problem, it is now a structural part of what many people see by default.

📜 The Announcement

In November 2025, Kapwing published the “AI Slop Report, The Global Rise of Low Quality AI Videos,” based on social data and YouTube trends from October 2025. The team manually analyzed the top 100 trending YouTube channels in every country, flagged AI slop channels, pulled view, subscriber, and revenue estimates, then tested a fresh YouTube Shorts account to see what a new user is shown.

The headline findings, Spain’s trending slop channels have over 20.22 million subscribers, South Korea’s have 8.45 billion views, one Indian channel is estimated to earn about 4.25 million dollars a year, and around 33 percent of Shorts on a new feed are brainrot.

⚙️ How It Works

• Clear definitions first - AI slop is defined as careless, low quality content generated with automatic tools to farm views or sway opinion, while brainrot is compulsive, nonsensical content that seems to corrode your attention and is often AI generated.

• Global channel scan - Researchers pulled the top 100 trending channels in every country, then tagged which ones primarily publish AI slop or brainrot, building a worldwide view of where this content is gaining ground.

• Country level rollup - They then aggregated subscribers, views, and estimated yearly ad revenue by country, which is how we get stats like Spain leading in slop subscribers and South Korea leading in total slop views.

• Winner take most channels - Individual channels like India’s Bandar Apna Dost, realistic monkey drama shorts, and US based Cuentos Facinantes, low effort Dragon Ball style clips, each rack up over a billion views and millions of subscribers on their own.

• Fresh feed experiment - On a brand new YouTube account, 21 percent of the first 500 Shorts were AI generated and 33 percent were brainrot, showing how heavily this stuff features in a default feed.

• All data time boxed - The analysis is based on publicly available data and revenue estimates from tools like Social Blade, with all figures captured as of October 2025, so the real numbers are likely even higher now.

💡 Why This Matters

• Your competition is not just other creators - You are now competing with factories of auto generated clips that publish at machine speed, which changes what it takes to stand out and stay visible.

• Attention is getting trained on junk food - If a third of new user feeds are brainrot, audiences are being conditioned to expect constant dopamine hits, which makes thoughtful content feel “slow” unless you design it well.

• Trust is becoming the scarce asset - As slop and brainrot spread, viewers will rely more on signals of authenticity, personality, and consistency, which is where solopreneurs and real brands can win.

• Platforms are in a tight spot - YouTube benefits from endless engagement but risks alienating advertisers and serious creators if feeds feel like a landfill, which means policies and algorithms could shift quickly.

• AI itself is not the villain - The report also implies a split, the same tools that produce slop can also produce high quality work when combined with real creative direction, so the issue is incentives and intent, not the tech alone.

🏢 What This Means for Businesses

• Position yourself as anti slop - Make it explicit that your content is curated, intentional, and human guided, for example behind the scenes, process breakdowns, or transparent use of AI as an assistant, not a content farm.

• Design for depth, not just reach - If feeds are saturated with low value clips, there is real opportunity in slightly longer, more useful videos that people save, share, and come back to, even if they get fewer raw impressions.

• Use AI to raise quality, not volume - Let AI help with scripting, editing, repurposing, and translation, then apply your taste and standards so the output is sharper than slop, not just faster.

• Audit your Shorts strategy - If you are leaning into Shorts, check whether you are sliding toward brainrot patterns just to keep up, short and punchy is fine, but tie it back to a real narrative, offer, or transformation.

• Build your own trust channels - Email lists, communities, and private feeds matter more in a noisy world, because they let you bypass algorithm slop and talk directly to people who actually chose to hear from you.

🔚 The Bottom Line

Kapwing’s AI Slop Report confirms what many people already felt, the internet is filling up with low effort AI video created for clicks, not for value.

The good news is that as noise rises, genuinely useful, human centered content becomes more rare and more valuable.

If you treat AI as your co pilot rather than your replacement, you can ride the wave without becoming part of the slop.

💬 Your Take

When you scroll YouTube or Shorts lately, does it feel more helpful or more like brainrot, and what are you going to do differently in your own content to land firmly on the side of value?

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