AI Slop

Well. Apparently, I learned a new phrase this week.

AI slop.

We were running an ad on Instagram. It featured animated cartoon versions of my co-founder and me telling part of the story behind Aion. And someone commented. Actually, a few someones commented: “AI slop ad.” Different people. Same phrase.

My first reaction?

Well… fuck.

Because nobody spends months building something they genuinely believe can help people and thinks, You know what I hope they call this? Slop.

So I looked it up. And here’s the interesting part. “AI slop” does not mean anything created using artificial intelligence. It means low-quality AI-generated content.

And honestly? Fair enough. There is a lot of it.

AI slop is real

We’ve all seen it. Content made simply because it can be made. Generic articles nobody needed. Images with six fingers. Videos that feel both incredibly polished and completely soulless. Thousands of words saying almost nothing. Content created at massive scale with very little thought behind why it should exist.

I don’t particularly want that internet either.

But somewhere along the way, we’ve started using “AI” and “AI slop” almost interchangeably. And I think that misses something important.

A tool and what someone chooses to do with that tool are not the same thing.

I use AI. Obviously. We built Aion. Artificial intelligence is part of the technology that makes what he does possible. I also use AI in my work. I use it to organize thoughts. Challenge ideas. Research. Ask better questions. Look at something I wrote and say, “This doesn’t sound like me. Fix it.” And sometimes I tell it the exact opposite: “Stop fixing me. That sounds too fucking polished.”

Because I don’t want technology replacing my voice. I want it helping me use my voice better.

There is a difference.

Maybe the ad deserved some of it

That’s uncomfortable to say when you’re the person paying for the thing.

But the people commenting weren’t necessarily telling me our company was garbage. They were telling us something about how the creative made them feel. The ad used AI animation. And enough AI-generated advertising now looks similar that people recognize the aesthetic immediately.

So rather than getting pissed off and deciding everyone commenting is an asshole, I think there’s value in listening. Maybe the technology became more noticeable than the story. Maybe we made something that looked too much like everything else people are tired of seeing.

That’s useful information.

Because I never want Aion to feel like something we generated, shoved onto the internet, and hoped people would buy. There are actual humans behind this thing. A lot of them. People arguing over features. Changing things. Testing things. Breaking things. Fixing things. Caring probably far too much about tiny details no normal person will ever notice.

And underneath all of that is a very human reason we started. Technology should solve a human problem.

That’s the line for me.

We didn’t build Aion because AI was trendy

We built him because I knew what it was like to put in the work and still feel like I was guessing. I knew what it was like to not be able to afford a trainer. To use several different apps. To search for answers and find twenty different opinions. To wonder whether the plan needed to change or whether I simply needed to stick with it longer.

AI gave us a way to build something that can meet someone where they are, understand what they’re trying to accomplish, and adapt as their life changes.

That’s interesting to me.

The fact that AI is involved? Honestly, much less so.

Where useful AI ends and slop begins

I don’t think the answer is whether AI touched it. I think the better questions are:

• Was there thought behind it?
• Was there a human being making decisions?
• Was anyone checking the result?
• Does it solve a problem?
• Does it teach something?
• Does it save someone time?
• Does it make something more accessible?
• Does it make someone’s life even slightly better?

Or did we just create more noise because technology made it easy to create more noise?

Those are very different things.

And that’s a standard I’m perfectly comfortable having applied to us too.

AI isn’t inherently interesting. What people do with it can be.

AI can generate garbage. So can humans. We’ve been doing that long before artificial intelligence came along.

And AI can also help a trainer support more clients. Help someone understand their nutrition. Help a person who cannot afford traditional coaching finally have some structure. Help someone sort through an absurd amount of conflicting information and understand what actually applies to them. Help a small company do things that once required resources only large companies had.

That isn’t automatically revolutionary because AI was involved.

It still has to be good.

It still has to be useful.

It still has to earn someone’s attention.

And apparently sometimes you have to put something out into the world, have a stranger call it slop, swallow your pride, and ask: Okay. Is there something we can do better?

I actually think that’s a pretty healthy question.

So yes. AI slop exists. I don’t want to make it. And if we accidentally do?

Tell us. We’ll make something better.

If you want the longer version of why the label bothers me less than what it obscures, that’s the next piece.