More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop.One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention.

The findings are a snapshot of a rapidly expanding industry that is saturating big social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualised, addictive and international.A Guardian analysis this year found that nearly 10% of YouTube’s fastest-growing channels were AI slop, racking up millions of views despite the platform’s efforts to curb “inauthentic content”.The channels found by Kapwing are globally distributed and globally watched.They have millions of subscribers: in Spain, 20 million people, or nearly half the country’s population, follow the trending AI channels.AI channels have 18 million followers in Egypt, 14.

5 million in the US, and 13.5 million in Brazil.Bandar Apna Dost, the most-viewed channel in the study, is based in India and now has 2.4bn views.It features the adventures of an anthropomorphic rhesus monkey and a muscular character modelled off the Incredible Hulk who fights demons and travels on a helicopter made of tomatoes.

Kapwing estimated that the channel could make as much as $4.25m.Its owner did not respond to a query from the Guardian.Rohini Lakshané, a researcher on technology and digital rights, said Bandar Apna Dost’s popularity most likely stems from its absurdity, its hyper-masculine tropes and the fact that it lacks a plot, which makes it accessible to new viewers.Pouty Frenchie, based in Singapore, has 2bn views and appears to target children.

It chronicles the adventures of a French bulldog – driving to a candy forest, eating crystal sushi – many of them set to a soundtrack of children’s laughter.Kapwing estimates it makes nearly $4m a year.Cuentos Facinantes, based in the US, also appears to target children with cartoon storylines, and has 6.65 million subscribers – making it the most-subscribed channel in the study.Meanwhile, The AI World, based in Pakistan, contains AI-generated shorts of catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, with titles like Poor People, Poor Family, and Flood Kitchen.

Many of these videos are set to a soundtrack called Relaxing Rain, Thunder & Lightning Ambience for Sleep.The channel itself has 1.3bn views.It’s hard to say exactly how significant these channels are compared with the vast sea of content already on YouTube.The platform does not release information on how many views it has yearly, or how many of these are from AI content.

But behind these uncanny scenes of candy forests and disasters is a semi-structured, growing industry of people trying to find new ways to monetise the world’s most powerful platforms using AI tools.“There are these big swathes of people on Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord and message boards exchanging tips and ideas [and] selling courses about how to sort of make slop that will be engaging enough to earn money,” said Max Read, a journalist who has written extensively on AI slop.“They have what they call niches.One that I noticed recently is AI videos of people’s pressure cookers exploding on the stove.”While creators of AI slop are everywhere, Read said that many come from English-speaking countries with relatively strong internet connectivity, where the median wage is less than the amount they can make on YouTube.

“It’s mostly sort of middle-income countries like Ukraine, lots and lots of people in India, Kenya, Nigeria, a fair number in Brazil.You see Vietnam, too.Places with relative freedom online to access social media sites,” he said.It’s not always easy to be an AI slop creator.For one thing, creator programmes on YouTube and Meta aren’t always transparent about who they pay for content, and how much, said Read.

For another, the AI slop ecosystem is full of scammers: people selling tips and courses on how to make viral content – who often make more money than the AI slop producers themselves,But, at least for some, it’s a living,And while new, attention-grabbing ideas – such as exploding pressure cookers – constantly emerge, when it comes to AI slop, human creativity matters far less than the algorithms that distribute the content on Meta and YouTube,“These websites are huge A/B testing machines just by their nature,” said Read,“Almost anything that you can think of, you could already find on Facebook.

So the question is, how do you find the things that are kind of doing well, and then how do you scale that? How do you make 10 of them?”A YouTube spokesperson said: “Generative AI is a tool, and like any tool it can be used to make both high- and low-quality content.We remain focused on connecting our users with high-quality content, regardless of how it was made.All content uploaded to YouTube must comply with our community guidelines, and if we find that content violates a policy, we remove it.”The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods.

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