Latest report: over 21% of YouTube is now AI slop
A new study by Kapwing suggests that 21-33% of YouTube’s feed may be made up of AI-generated deceptive or “brainrot” videos.
As tools like OpenAI’s “Sora” and Google’s “Veo” make AI video creation more accessible than ever before, more than 21% of YouTube videos now consist of what’s called “AI waste,” according to Kapwing’s new report. The US is the third-largest consumer of YouTube AI slop overall, behind only South Korea and Pakistan.
Kapwing company simulated the experience of the “unbroken” YouTube Shorts algorithm by creating a new YouTube account and noting the prevalence of AI-generated poor or “brain-rot” low-quality videos, irrelevant online content, among the first 500 videos that appeared in the stream. While the test accounts did not show the first 16 videos in the stream, a total of 104 (21%) of the first 500 videos were AI-generated.
South Korea, which has some of the highest social media and smartphone usage rates in the world, leads the way in waste consumption, with its most popular AI waste channels viewed an estimated 8.25 billion times. The East Asian country’s most popular slop channel, Three Minutes Wisdom, which features photorealistic wild animals being defeated by cute pets, has garnered 2.02 billion views.
Pakistan came in second place in the rankings, with its top slop channels racking up 5.34 billion views. The United States ranked third in terms of slop consumption, with the top channels collecting 3.39 billion views. The top channel in the US, the Spanish-language “Cuentos Facientes”, has collected 1.28 billion views and earned an estimated $2.66 million for its creators.
While YouTube may be more slop-infested than ever before, it’s not the only part of the internet that’s been taken over by AI-generated content lately. Written content is now more AI-generated than ever before, with the percentage of AI-generated articles on the internet reaching just over 50% as of May 2025.
Some YouTube competitors, such as TikTok, have taken steps to stem the tide of AI-slop on their platforms. TikTok rolled out features that can enable users to keep AI-slop out of their feeds last month to help users better identify AI-generated content.
Credits:
Image:
