AI Slop Isn't All Bad (It's Just Mostly Bad)

You’ve probably heard the term “AI Slop” and immediately think of em-dash-filled high school essays, or questionably-accurate historical articles on Facebook accompanied by AI images of Henry VIII wearing Air Jordans and a feathered boa.

We are currently living through a weird, distorted moment in the history of the internet. The volume of content is exploding, but actual information feels like it’s plummeting.

But… what actually is this “Slop”? And is it the end of digital marketing as we know it?

What is AI Slop?

In the early days of the internet, we had “spam.” It was annoying, but usually easy to spot. It was a Nigerian Prince offering you millions, or a pill that would produce physiological miracles (neither of which were true, according to “a friend of ours”).

It is content—text, images, code—generated by Large Language Models (LLMs) with minimal human oversight, designed primarily to fill space rather than convey meaning. It is the “pink slime” of the digital ecosystem. It looks like meat, it’s processed like meat, but it’s really just filler.

You see it in search results where 2,000 words tell you absolutely nothing about how to unclog a drain. You see it on LinkedIn, where a connection posts a three-paragraph comment that agrees with you aggressively but adds zero nuance.

And you see it in recipes, where you get the ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE instead of just a bloody recipe for borscht.

It feels… off. It’s hard to put your finger on why it feels off, but it is, you can just feel it. But… why?

Why does AI Slop happen?

To understand AI Slop, you have to understand the machine.

You can think of LLMs as a sort of “stochastic parrots.” They don’t “know” facts. They don’t have a worldview. They don’t have a soul, or a favorite color, or a childhood memory of accidentally peeing themselves in Coquitlam Centre playing pinball during the greatest game of their life, then having to run to the bathroom to try in vain to dry your trousers with a hand dryer for half an hour. For example.

LLMs are simply predicting the next likely word in a sequence based on a probabilistic analysis of billions of parameters of human discourse.

This leads to a phenomenon you’ve probably heard of: Regression to the Mean.

In statistics, regression to the mean suggests that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on its second measurement. In the context of AI writing, it means the model will always gravitate toward the most common, most “average” way of saying something.

If you ask an LLM to write a LinkedIn post about leadership, it looks at every post about leadership ever written, and gives you the average of all of them.

Is AI Slop bad?

In grade 9 English, Mrs. Kuperis taught our English class two things that always stuck with me.

1. The Em-Dash: She taught us to use hyphens and dashes as a narrative break to introduce new—but related—ideas.
2. The Rule of Three: She taught us to always list things in not ones, not twos, but threes. It is a very effective narrative, rhetorical and (I can’t think of a third thing ffs) tool.

Fast forward to 2026. These are two of the biggest telltale signs of AI-generated content.

Paste a prompt into ChatGPT or Claude, and watch the output. You will drown in a sea of “delving,” “landscapes,” and perfectly structured lists of three, usually separated by—you guessed it—em-dashes.

Does this make the content bad?

Not inherently. Mrs. Kuperis was right; these are good writing tools.

Does it make it AI Slop?

Well, that’s a tougher question.

AI Slop feels lazy because anyone can generate it.

But, and I’m sorry if this is news to you: the internet before LLMs wasn’t exactly filled only with the complete works of Shakespeare and Moliere.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. The majority of human content was crap; there was just less of it.

For the last decade, we’ve had content farms churning out SEO bait written by underpaid freelancers who didn’t care about the topic. We’ve had corporate blogs written by committees that stripped every ounce of personality out of the draft before hitting publish.

So now, the proverbial million monkeys on a million typewriters have become reality. And the typewriters are turbo-charged.

AI Slop isn’t bad if the ideas are good. But if the ideas are simply regressed-to-the-mean regurgitations of bad ideas in the first place… then yes, AI Slop is bad.

The “Uncanny Valley” of Text

There is a concept in robotics called the Uncanny Valley. It refers to that creepy feeling you get when a robot looks almost human, but not quite. It’s more disturbing than a robot that looks like a toaster.

We have reached the Uncanny Valley of text.

When you read a piece of AI Slop, your brain sends up a red flag. It’s too polished. The grammar is too perfect. The transitions are too smooth. It uses the word “tapestry” to describe B2B software sales.

It lacks the jagged edges of human thought. It lacks the “umms,” the slang, the weird metaphors (like comparing email marketing to a banana stand), and the controversial opinions.

Our analysis of 2.6 million LinkedIn engagements backs this up: certain words and phrases kill engagement precisely because they scream “this isn’t a real person.”

Should we avoid AI Slop?

It depends entirely on what you’re trying to do.

The Utility Argument:

If you are translating an email into German to book a restaurant when you’re on holiday in Munich, it doesn’t matter if it’s AI Slop. You just want a schnitzel. You don’t need the waiter to admire your prose style.

If you are summarizing a 50-page legal document to see if you’re getting sued, bring on the AI Slop.

If you are spitballing ideas for a campaign, use the LLM to get the bad ideas out of the way. It’s can great sounding board (though don’t forget it’ll always regress to the mean…)

The Reputation Argument:

However, if you are posting on LinkedIn? If you are sending an email to a prospect? If you are writing a blog post that represents your brand?

Then it absolutely should NOT be AI Slop.

Remember: Trust is the currency of the B2B world.

Generic content gets scrolled past. Authentic content, even if it has a tpyo, even if it’s a bit weird, stops the thumb.

This is the heart of The Great Disconnect—your buyers are on LinkedIn, evaluating you, but most teams are posting like robots (or not posting at all).

Can you use AI to make non-slop content?

Yes, and no.

You can’t fundamentally make an LLM (with current technology) avoid the statistical reasons underpinning AI Slop. If you just ask a vanilla model to “write a post,” it will give you vanilla ice cream. Every single time.

Sure, you could find and replace em-dashes. You could ban the word “delve.” But that’s not really a solution. That’s putting a pancake on a bunny.

The “Pickaxe” Problem

Right now, there is a whole industry of “Prompt Engineers” selling you the “perfect prompt” to make AI sound human.

“Act as a world-class copywriter with 20 years of experience…”

Nice try, but it doesn’t work. It just makes the robot sound like a pretentious robot.

The Real Solution: Variance and DNA

To beat the regression to the mean, you need to inject variance. You need to force the model off the beaten path.

This is where things get interesting. At Drumbeat, we stopped trying to “prompt” our way out of the problem and started looking at the data.

We realized that every human has a unique writing fingerprint. We call it AuthorDNA™.

It’s not just about “formal vs. casual.” It’s about 240+ subtle variables:

• Do you use Oxford commas?
• Do you use short, punchy sentences? Or long, meandering ones?
• Do you use aggressive verbs? What are you looking at, tough guy?

The “stochastic parrot” stops mimicking the entire internet and starts mimicking you, at scale.

AI Slop isn’t bad. But it also isn’t YOU.

Your team, your sales reps, your execs, Linda from HR—they all have networks. They all have digital personalities.

If you let them post AI Slop, you are devaluing their personalities. You are turning them into bots.

But if you can unlock their actual voices, at scale, with authenticity, you win.

So, is AI Slop bad?

Mostly, yes. It’s noise. It’s pollution. It’s the background hum of a boring refrigerator.

But it’s also a massive opportunity.

Because when everyone else is zigging with generic, “delving,” em-dash-riddled content, you have a massive opportunity to zag.

If you can use technology to amplify humanity rather than replace it, you stand out.

That’s why Drumbeat exists.