It is no secret that technology touches every aspect of our lives and we are increasingly trusting the machine above our own instincts. Get on a bus, travel in a train carriage or sit on a delayed plane and you will notice that probably 80 percent of passengers, young and old alike, are glued to their screens. And not everyone is like me, trying to finish this article while in transit; that is to say, I am typing away after my flight got delayed — a common occurrence in European airports.

Beside me, a fellow passenger who has hardly made eye contact is consumed by his screen and giggling to himself at some short social media stories that deliver no wisdom or knowledge — known as “slop” or “brain rot.” The one next to him, I have seen her playing games from the minute she sat down, even before we were informed our flight was delayed, first due to de-icing the plane and later due to losing our takeoff slot. After much negotiation from our diligent captain, we took off two hours later, without these two fellow passengers or many others up and down the plane taking even one eye away from their screen.

It seems that these screens keep on giving them material that keeps them satisfied, engaged and happy, even though more than 20 percent of the content YouTube shows to new users, for example, is now low-quality, AI-generated slop. As long as people are clicking more, platforms are happily piling up the cash, despite the consumers being left swimming in trash.

Social media platforms are happily piling up the cash, despite the consumers being left swimming in trash

Mohamed Chebaro

The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels — the top 100 in various countries — and found that 278 of them contained only AI slop. Together, these channels have amassed 63 billion views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117 million in revenue each year.

To test the algorithm and its guardrails, the researchers created a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended on its feed were AI slop material. Meanwhile, a third were what is known as “brain rot,” a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content that is made to monetize attention despite serving no purpose or cause or doing anything other than making people’s brain numb.

These channels are distributed globally and watched by millions of people all round the world. In Spain, 20 million people follow the trending AI channels, while there are also 18 million followers in Egypt, 14.5 million in the US and 13.5 million in Brazil.

Many red flags have been raised by governments and support groups, fearing the impact of the waves of useless content that are flooding the internet and slipping through the guardrails of even the best-intentioned platforms to reach children and young people, who are increasingly glued to their screens. This slop and brain rot, it is feared, will seep through and do indefinite damage to them.

Governments are now raising the alarm concerning this trend and Australia has even been courageous enough to ban social media for under-16s, while France may follow suit to try and limit the damage of bad content on young people. The EU as a bloc is also trying to hold the tech giants accountable for the damage caused by their unmoderated digital and AI-powered tools and platforms. Other governments, such as in the UK, are trying to open dialogues and demand higher-quality content, dissuading platforms from promoting low-quality clickbait.

However, the real front line seems to be in families’ living rooms — and those attempting to face down the slop and brain rot are fighting a losing battle. Big Tech appears to be impervious to any efforts to impose moderation or regulation, let alone accountability, in the new age of digital and technological impunity that is championed by the US under the banner of protecting freedom of speech and personal liberties.

The real front line seems to be in families’ living rooms — and those facing down the slop are fighting a losing battle

Mohamed Chebaro

Just a word of fairness here that the digital realm, with or without AI, has also produced a lot of high-quality content and serves as an important tool for science and development, helping to inform and increase knowledge, in addition to a lot of enjoyable recreational content. But more needs to be done to weed out and break the money-making trends.

Over the past two years, the advent of large language models like ChatGPT and Dall-E has popularized content creation and made it available to all. This has enabled vast swaths of the population to create content, no matter if it lacks depth or direction. And this is where the danger to society lies. The fear is that, before long, this contextless content with no plot and no target becomes the new normal, aiming to satiate an appetite for the surreal and with the desire to go viral as the sole driving force.

However, looking for a way to define and shield against this flood of content simply through a technological prism would miss the point. Us consumers are to be blamed too.

Yes, we are living in an age of algorithm-driven AI tools, which is dominated by a quest for engagement and the desire to turbo-charge it. Creating AI slop is, after all, a means of employment. But it is also a product of our global economy, in which demand fuels supply. This economic model is dependent on a few powerful tech companies and it appears to offer dwindling returns for real work alongside fortunes for those who succeed in using AI-generated content. This is now the norm and consumers, no matter their age, seem to want to buy into it and are OK with it.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.