AI slop: why it is a brand problem, not a tech problem

AI slop is content mass-produced with artificial intelligence that ends up generic, repetitive and without an idea behind it. For a brand, the problem appears precisely when the image comes out well and cannot be told apart from anyone else's.

What AI slop is

AI slop is generic digital content mass-produced with artificial intelligence. The term has become common for something anyone recognizes while scrolling: images and videos that are correct, neat and forgettable, and that could belong to any brand.

A piece can have good light, good definition and believable characters, and still be slop. What defines it is that nobody decided what it had to say.

Why AI slop is a risk for a brand

Today any team has access to similar tools. That is good news for producing more and faster, and a risk for standing out.

If many brands ask a tool to propose a campaign, they will most likely end up with similar results. And the risk is that the campaign is interchangeable, even if it is well made.

For a brand, that is expensive even if the piece was produced quickly. A piece that is not recognized as its own ends up working for the whole category. It is what we call, in another article, the risk of average aesthetics.

Where AI slop appears: when a decision is missing

It is tempting to blame the technology. But slop appears when you start at the end: a tool is asked to propose the idea and the first thing that looks good gets published.

At FeedGuru the order is different: objective, message, audience and story, and only then the resources. When that decision has already been made, the tool produces what the brand needs to say. The step by step is in thinking about the idea before the prompt, and the full process in AI video production for brands.

Responsibility is not outsourced either. When a campaign made with AI does not work, the answer lies with the people and teams who made the decisions. That includes reviewing what is shown and with what permissions before publishing.

How to avoid AI slop: four questions before the first prompt

Before writing a prompt, you have to know what you want to say. In practice, that means four questions worth answering in writing before producing anything:

• What do we want to tell? Not the topic ("Mother's Day"), but the story. For the same date, one brand can talk about small everyday gestures and another about an experience to share. Both are fine. What does not work is the average version of the two.

• Who are we talking to? The context and the audience are what guide the idea. Without that information, a tool tends toward the most generic result.

• What has to stay recognizable? Product, characters, spaces, tone. If that is not defined, each new piece drifts a little further from the previous one.

• Who decides and who takes responsibility? Someone has to choose among all the options, discard what does not work and answer for what gets published.

An example: Pet Friendly at Alto Palermo

Alto Palermo needed to communicate something simple: that it is pet friendly. The quickest way out was a card with the message, and it would probably have looked like any other shopping center's.

In Pet Friendly we chose something else: telling the visit to the shopping center from a pet's point of view. The camera and the scale of the shots follow its path, and the space is discovered from its height. What changed the piece was the decision made beforehand: which story was worth telling.

Why the risk is double in a shopping center

A shopping center is a building people know. If a piece shows a shopping center that does not look like the real one, the audience notices right away.

If a commercial takes place inside a shopping center, that shopping center has to be recognizable and keep its architecture from one shot to the next. The same goes for the characters, the actions and the continuity of the story.

For a shopping center that produces for screens, social media and outdoor at the same time, slop shows in the whole: an entire calendar of content that does not look like anyone in particular. That is the less visible side of the retail bottleneck: producing more without judgment does not solve it.

What sets one campaign apart from another

The tools will become more and more accessible, and that is fine. The difference will lie in what happens before using them: the idea, the judgment and someone who decides what is worth telling. We also see it in the campaigns from the region we review in AI advertising in Latin America.

Frequently asked questions

What does AI slop mean?

It is generic digital content mass-produced with artificial intelligence: pieces that are technically correct, without an idea of their own behind them.

Is all AI-made content slop?

No. Slop is content with no idea and no decision behind it. A piece produced with AI from a clear idea, with direction and review, is not.

How can a brand keep its AI content from looking generic?

By defining, before producing, what it wants to tell, to whom, what has to stay recognizable and who decides. The tool comes in afterwards.

Who is responsible if an AI-made campaign goes wrong?

The people and teams who decided to produce and publish it. The tool does not change that responsibility.

If you want to plan your next campaign starting from a clear idea, tell us what you have in mind or see how we work on campaigns and commercials.