A new study from video-editing company Kapwing shows just how aggressively low-effort AI content—dubbed “AI slop”—is worming its way into YouTube’s recommendation engine. More than one in five videos served to new users falls into this category, which includes content created purely to rake in views with low production values and zero narrative. Among 15,000 top YouTube channels surveyed, 278 were fully AI slop, combining for a staggering 63 billion views, 221 million subscribers, and an estimated $117 million a year in ad revenue.
This is a global story. In Spain, nearly half the population follows these channels, with Egypt, Brazil, and the US not far behind. The top performer? India’s surrealist oddity Bandar Apna Dost, racking up 2.4 billion views and starring a tomato-helicopter-flying monkey and a budget Hulk battling demons. It may be nonsensical, but it’s lucrative, with revenue estimates north of $4 million. Other major players like Pouty Frenchie and Cuentos Facinantes are capitalizing on kid-friendly AI content, while The AI World in Pakistan wraps sobering visualizations of flooding in soothing ambient noise.
Behind the madness is a semi-structured economy fueled by Telegram groups, Discord servers, and hustlers hawking guidebooks on how to manufacture viral slop at scale. Many creators hail from countries with strong internet access but low average incomes, where YouTube offers a rare income boost—if they can dodge scammers and opaque payout systems. Still, the real MVP here isn’t the content itself; it’s the algorithm, quietly A/B testing the entire internet to see if a bulldog eating sushi or a pressure cooker explosion earns more clicks.
Read more at The Guardian and our previous story on this here.