The business of AI slop

Full story: Making cash off ‘AI slop’: The surreal video business taking over the web

I talked to AI-video makers about how they're making money on an increasingly uncanny internet:

He made his first videos by taking viral clips on Instagram Reels and throwing them into Sora, asking the AI to transform them into something new. His first viral hit, which he described as “some fat dude getting a massage,” gained 30 million views, but many more have followed. He now uses AI in every part of his eight-step workflow, from generating ideas to adding his logo in postproduction to discourage video thieves.

His widely shared video of a seemingly real kangaroo at an airport gate, he said, took him 15 minutes, mainly because it was the AI tool’s idea; he had asked it to spit out something that would go viral, and it did. “I don’t want to sit here and act like I’m this genius,” he said. “I’m an entrepreneur.”

But he has been unnerved by some of the responses to his more popular videos, including threats from viewers who say he’s summoning something dark he can’t control. His videos of lizard-headed babies — again, the AI tool’s idea — have been especially unpopular. “People are saying, ‘This is disturbing.’ But this is what you guys want to watch at the end of the day,” he said.

It’s not all easy money because many of the companies charge for individual AI-processing tasks; he budgets himself about $100 a day in AI fees, and a single 10-second rendering costs him about $7.50 to make. But he still expects to be made obsolete in short order, saying he believes that “in a year from now, pretty much everything is going to be very easy for the average person” to make.

His bigger fear, beyond how he’ll pay his mortgage when that time comes, is a more existential one: about what all this limitless creation is doing to our brains. “When you have every single form of media, every possible thing you can think of at your fingerprints at all times,” he said, “is anything exciting anymore?”

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