'AI slop' has become the shorthand for content that is technically competent and emotionally empty.

People now know AI content when they see it. Slick, similar and pseudo-looking people with expressionless voices are flooding the internet. The festive film where every family looks like the same good-y-two-shoes family. The LinkedIn post that says a great deal and means nothing. The product shot so perfect that nobody believes the product.

A year or two ago, audiences were in awe of the fact that a machine could make so much slick content so quickly. That novelty has worn off. Today, consumers spot AI-generated content in seconds and don’t always relate to it.

AI has democratised content creation. Unfortunately, it has also democratised mediocrity

We are living through perhaps the most extraordinary transformation in the history of content creation. What once required creative teams, production studios, photographers, editors and significant budgets can now be accomplished in minutes, sometimes with a single prompt.

For marketers, the possibilities are enormous. Campaigns can be developed faster, content can be personalised at scale, and brands can engage consumers across multiple platforms, languages and formats at a fraction of traditional costs.

But somewhere in this excitement around speed, scale and efficiency, are we creating more content, but less value?

While the frequency of content goes up, the quality and brand connection suffer

When the brand is clearly defined, knows what it stands for and has a sharp personality, and that clarity is taken ahead to the AI content, then AI can become a powerful amplifier. When a brand does not, AI simply produces more generic, undifferentiated content, faster and cheaper.

A vague brief used to give you one forgettable ad. Now it gives you a hundred. And fills what is often referred to as the content junkyard.

Much of the AI content is undifferentiated, looks average, and the average has never built a brand.

Credibility is the real currency, and it often gets sacrificed

AI Slop can potentially also lead to the erosion of authenticity and trust. That, of course, depends on how AI is used.

Consumers have historically understood that advertising involves storytelling, imagination and creative licence. But there is a line separating creative storytelling from what one might call manufactured authenticity. When brands use synthetic customer testimonials, artificially generated experiences or unrealistic product demonstrations without appropriate disclosure, they risk crossing that line.

Consumers are already questioning what is real and what is artificially created; credibility becomes increasingly valuable and can be destroyed through these kinds of non-transparent moves.

The need for human intelligence and creativity

It’s become pretty clear to everyone that AI essentially recycles the ideas that have already been created somewhere and exist on the internet at large. Anything original rarely turns up when you use AI.

Original thinking, breakthrough insight and everything similar to that which really builds differentiated and unique brand stories and brands needs a fresh human mind to bring to that to the party.

And in a similar vein, it’s important for human oversight to ensure that the regular AI content that gets generated is on brand, looks at least somewhat different and is on brief to ensure that the AI content factory doesn’t generate work that will deliver a negative or sluggish impact on the brand. 

Where AI adds real value

Used well, AI lets brands do things that were simply out of reach before.

• Ideas which were beyond what budgets allowed: Stories set in places, eras or scales that would have cost a fortune to shoot.
• Testing ideas at scale: One can now create multiple routes for a film before picking the best one for the final production.
• Language and regional versions at scale: Language and regional versions that feel made for the local audience, especially in a market as diverse as India.
• Human-crafted ideas created by AI: The best AI work probably helps embellish insightful ideas thought of by clever human beings and produced smartly.

Finally, it boils down to authenticity and credibility

In a few years, almost every brand will use AI in its marketing. The sameness will probably multiply. What will separate brands is whether people see the content as on-brand and credible.

Credibility has always been built the same way: a clear point of view, kept consistently, told with care. AI does not change that equation.

So use AI and use it boldly. But never let it do the one job it cannot do, which is deciding what your brand has to say.

The author is founder and CEO, J7