The AI sloppification of the internet is well underway. And while it was easy to laugh at Shrimp Jesus and Challah Horse, the ubiquity of AI-generated content presents new challenges for newsrooms. I’m not talking about Google’s AI overviews choking publishers’ search traffic into a doomsday “Google Zero” scenario, worrying though that is. I’m talking about all the other ways the exponentially growing surge of AI-generated content will make digital media’s distribution problem even worse.

Consider how the online platforms for which newsrooms rely on for an already-shrinking number of clicks are already flooded with AI-generated content. Facebook, which has long since turned off the algorithmic firehose that propelled upstart digital media companies at the start of my career in the early 2010s, regularly sees AI slop generate hundreds of millions of engagements. Pinterest users have grown so frustrated with recommendations dominated by AI slop, the company recently added an optional setting to help people see less AI-made content.

AI may be even more prevalent on text-based platforms. The amount of AI-generated content on Medium rose from less than 2 percent to 37 percent between 2022 and 2024, according to a paper published this year. More than half of long posts on LinkedIn were written with the help of AI, according to another study that found there’s been a nearly 200 percent increase in AI-written posts on the platform overall.

These numbers likely understate how prevalent AI is. YouTube is filled with tutorials explaining how people can use AI to automate their own AI slop creation in order to take advantage of monetization opportunities on social media And new and better AI tools from Google, OpenAI, Meta, and others mean that it’s easier than ever to get into the business of AI slop.

While this is worrying for the state of the internet, generally, it’s especially concerning for newsrooms. Now, not only are publishers battling ever-changing algorithms for visibility, they’re directly competing with an ever-growing amount of slop.

The effects of these dynamics are already playing out in some corners of the internet, with content creators on the losing end. But publishers and newsrooms are just as susceptible. And the AI slop problem could become a much bigger issue for them much faster than “Google Zero.”