The AI Sludge is Real: How AIGenerated Content is Breaking the Internet
You've likely noticed the explosion of AIgenerated art and videos on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. While the initial creations like Will Smith eating spaghetti or the drippedout Pope were amusing novelties, the landscape has shifted, and the consequences are becoming increasingly concerning. The surge in AI is impacting content creation, and not in a good way.
The Rise of AI Car Channels and Beyond
The issue truly hit home when AIgenerated car videos started flooding YouTube's suggested sidebar. These videos, often featuring fictitious vehicles like a 2025 Ford Model T that's actually a Model A, promise innovation but deliver nonsensical renders and inaccurate information.
What started as a funny little video investigation quickly turned into a deep dive into a massive and concerning trend. The scope of the AIgenerated content farms is truly staggering.
A Numbers Game: Quantity Over Quality
The investigation revealed hundreds of channels churning out these AIgenerated videos. One hundred channels with over 33,000 videos and they didn't end there. Most of these channels don't garner significant views individually, the sheer volume ensures that some videos hit, making the entire operation profitable. It took a mere 10 minutes to create an AI generated video.
The ease with which this content can be created and disseminated is alarming. Imagine a future where anyone can instruct AI to create thousands of YouTube channels, pumping out optimized content designed solely to maximize views and ad revenue. This is not a hypothetical scenario; it's essentially what's already happening.
From Cars to SelfHelp: The Dark Side of AI Content
The AI content creators pivot when needed, and it doesn't take long for these channels to evolve. Some channels abandoned car videos for fake movie trailers featuring Jason Statham. When the movie trailers didn't perform well enough, they moved on to AIgenerated selfhelp videos featuring Denzel Washington or Brené Brown.
The concerning aspect is the manipulation of vulnerable viewers. While fake car videos might be harmless, AIgenerated selfhelp content preys on people seeking guidance and solace, offering potentially harmful or misleading advice from a source that has no understanding of human emotion or experience. This is where the problem goes from annoying to dangerous.
This is a critical point: While it's easy to dismiss AIgenerated car videos, the manipulation of vulnerable individuals through fake selfhelp content is deeply disturbing.
The Dangers of Fake Inspiration
Unlike the obviously fake car videos, the AIgenerated selfhelp content is more insidious. It's easy for viewers to assume they are watching genuine speeches or interviews, leading them to internalize potentially harmful messages. The comments sections of these videos are filled with people genuinely connecting with the AIgenerated content, unaware of its artificial nature.
These channels, driven by profit, prioritize views over the wellbeing of their audience. They exploit the desire for selfimprovement, offering empty platitudes generated by an algorithm. The channels are merely trying to get more views and the most money.
The Erosion of Truth: AI in Academia and Beyond
The problem extends beyond YouTube. AI is also impacting academic research, with a surge in both real and fake research papers. The peer review process, meant to ensure accuracy, is being compromised as some researchers use AI to both write and review papers.
This creates a dangerous feedback loop, where AIgenerated nonsense is cited in other AIgenerated papers, potentially leading to entire fields of study being based on false information. AI doesn't know anything. It just predicts the next most likely word in a sentence based on what it's been trained on.
Lawsuits over AIgenerated legal citations that don't exist are further evidence of the growing problem. The result is less content is coming from humans at all, more comes from AI reinforcing an architecting.
Navigating the AI Sludge: A Call to Action
The increasing prevalence of AIgenerated content, combined with a lack of oversight and regulation, is creating a chaotic and confusing online environment. It's becoming increasingly difficult to discern what's real, leading to a breakdown in communication and societal trust. No one knows what's real. Everyone's operating on different sets of facts and the entire internet is slowly turning into an infinite loop of AI generated sludge feeding back into itself.
But there is a solution. Fortunately, it's free and simple.
The solution? Disconnect. Get off the internet. Get off your phone. Go outside. Delete everything algorithm based.
It's crucial to be proactive about the content you consume, to support human creators, and to prioritize quality over convenience. If something is made by a real person, you're gonna have to look harder and harder to find it. So you have to really want it.
Ultimately, the fight against the AI sludge is a fight for truth, for human connection, and for a more meaningful existence. It is our time.
Ground News: A Tool for Informed Consumption
This exact dynamic is playing out in the actual news cycle. The video is sponsored by Ground News, a site and app that pulls together news stories from across the political spectrum and shows you exactly how different outlets are framing the same thing. It's about not being a cog in the algorithm machine.