Romero: Can social media stop the ‘AI slop’ takeover?
Wednesday, 08/12/2026
Last Updated: Wednesday, 08/12/2026
By Noor HindiFrom talking fruit soap operas to synthetic influencers offering unsolicited advice, AI-generated content has become increasingly difficult to avoid online.
Most of it falls under the increasingly popular label “AI slop” — low-quality, mass produced content generated with artificial intelligence. Now, social media platforms are trying to figure out how to keep it from overwhelming users’ feeds without rejecting AI altogether.
University of Michigan School of Information professor Daniel Romero, an expert in social networks and online behavior, told NBC News that one of the biggest challenges in removing AI slop is figuring out what is AI-generated and what is just spam.
But even if platforms could reliably identify AI content, Romero said eliminating it altogether would be the wrong approach. Unlike traditional spam, AI-generated content is not inherently unwanted or harmful. People can also use generative AI to make useful, relevant contributions online.
“Users have maybe nothing to gain from spam,” Romero said. “Whereas they can actually use generative AI for genuinely valuable contributions in a platform, and so that already makes it more complicated.”
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Read “‘Stop the slop’ efforts gain traction as platforms draw lines around AI content’” at NBC News.
Learn more about Daniel Romero’s research by visiting his UMSI faculty profile.
