Last month, Merriam-Webster chose slop as its 2025 Word of the Year. They define it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” And there’s a huge demand for it.
Video-editing company Kapwing analyzed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels—the top 100 trending in every country—and discovered that 278 of them contain only AI slop.
At first, this might not sound like much, but together, these channels have amassed more than 63 billion views and 221 million subscribers, generating an estimated $117 million in revenue each year.
Screenshot: YouTube/@DigitalPersons
Spain had the most subscribers—20.22 million—among its trending AI slop channels, even though the country had fewer AI slop channels (8) among its top 100 than Pakistan (20), Egypt (14), South Korea (11), and the United States (9).
The AI slop channel with the most views was India’s Bandar Apna Dost, which at the time of the research in 2025 had 2.07 billion views and $4,251,500 in estimated earnings. Since then, it has reached 2.57 billion views.
Researchers also simulated the experience of YouTube users and noted that if you create an account and start scrolling Shorts with a fresh algorithm, 104 (21%) of the first 500 videos are AI slop.
But what does the company itself think of clips where a giant talking monkey working as a flight attendant drives a huge wooden crate of melting ice cream up and down the aisle?
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan believes generative AI can do for video what the synthesizer did for music.
“When YouTube was born 20 years ago, it was about using technology for more people to have their voice heard,” he said. “With AI, it’s the same core principle—how do we use technology to democratize creation?”
In his eyes, it’s the latest enhancement to their service.
“Just because the content is 75 percent AI-generated doesn’t make it any better or worse than a video that’s 5 percent AI-generated,” Mohan added.
While not everyone shares this view, clearly enough people keep watching to justify his words.
The Ipsos AI Monitor 2025 found that enthusiasm seems tied to economic outlooks: on average, 52% of 23,216 respondents across 30 countries said they are excited about products and services that use AI.
The countries at the top of this list, such as Indonesia (80%), Thailand (79%), and Malaysia (77%), tend to be the ones that also think it will benefit their economies, while those who are least excited—the United States (38%), Great Britain (37%), Sweden (34%), Belgium (32%), and Canada (31%)—tend to expect the opposite.
When Ipsos asked respondents how the use of AI will affect their entertainment options (TV, video content, movies, music, and books) in the next three to five years, 49% globally said they expect things to change for the better (while 14% said they think these industries are going to get worse, and 29% said they believe everything will remain more or less the same).
Regional differences were once again stark, with Thailand (75%), South Africa (69%), Indonesia (68%), Mexico (65%), and Colombia (65%) having the most optimists, and Canada (35%), Belgium (35%), France (33%), and Japan (33%) having the fewest.
The “next” era of impersonal and decontextualized video is coming to social media, and those who oppose it might be left on their own, training their feeds to resist the flood of AI slop.
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