How to dial down the AI slop on platforms

AI slop seems to be everywhere. Low-quality digital content made with artificial intelligence has flooded our feeds, screens and speakers. Is there anything we can do about it?

If you want fewer cartoonish videos of dead celebrities, creepy or absurd images or fake bands playing synthetic tunes, a few platforms have rolled out settings and features to help minimize AI-generated content.

Here is a guide on how to use them. But first, a caveat from Henry Ajder, who advises businesses and governments on AI and has been studying deepfakes since 2018. He warned that it’s “incredibly difficult” to entirely remove AI slop content entirely from all your feeds.

He compared AI slop to the smog generated from the industrial revolution, when there weren’t any pollution controls in place.

“It’s going to be very, very hard for people to avoid inhaling, in this analogy.”

Pinterest

Pinterest’s move to lean into the AI boom made it something of a poster child for the AI slop problem, as users complained that the online moodboard for pinning inspirational material by themes has become overrun with AI content.

So Pinterest recently rolled out a “tuner” that lets users adjust the amount of AI content they see in their feeds.

It rolled out first on Android and desktop operating systems, before starting on a more gradual rollout on iOS.

“Now, users can dial down the AI and add more of a human touch,” Pinterest said, adding that it would initially cover some categories that are “highly prone to AI modification or generation,” such as beauty, art, fashion, and home decor.

More categories have since been added, including architecture, art, beauty, entertainment, men’s, women’s, and children’s fashion, health, home décor, and sport, food, and drink.

To use the tuner, go to Settings and then to “refine your recommendations,” and then tap on GenAI interests, where you can use toggles to indicate the categories you’d like to see less AI content.

TikTok

It’s no surprise that AI-generated videos proliferate on TikTok, the short-video sharing app. The company says there are at least 1.3 billion video clips on its platform it has labeled as AI-generated.

TikTok said in November it was testing an update to give users more control of the AI-generated content in their For You feeds. It’s not clear when it will be widely available. TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

To see if you have it on the TikTok mobile app, go to Settings, then Content Preferences, then to Manage Topics where you’ll see a set of sliders to control various types of content, such as dance, humor, lifestyle, and nature.

You can also access the controls from the For You feed, by tapping the Share button on the side of a post, then tap Why this Video, then Adjust your For You, and then Manage topics.

There should be a new slider that allows you to dial down — or turn up — the amount of AI-generated content that you receive. If you don’t see it yet, it might be because you haven’t received the update yet. TikTok said late last year that it would start testing the feature in coming weeks.

These controls are not available on the desktop browser interface.

You won’t be able to get rid of AI content altogether — TikTok says the controls are used to tailor the content rather than removing or replacing it entirely from feeds.

“This means that people who love AI-generated history content can see more of this content, while those who’d rather see less can choose to dial things down,” it said.

Deezer

Song generation tools like Suno and Udio let users create music merely by typing some ideas into a chatbot window. Anyone can use them to spit out polished pop songs, but it also means streaming services have been flooded with AI tunes, often by accounts masquerading as real artists.

Among the music streaming platforms, only Deezer, a smaller European-based player, gives listeners a way to tell them apart by labeling songs as AI.

“Deezer has been really, really pushing the anti-AI generation music narrative,” said Henry Ajder.

Deezer says 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks, or more than 39% of the daily total, are uploaded to its platform every day and last year it detected and labeled more than 13.4 million AI tracks. The company says the people doing it are trying to make money by fraudulent streams.

Change your platform

If you can tear yourself away from Big Tech platforms, there is a new generation of apps targeting users who want to avoid AI.

Cara is a portfolio-sharing platform for artists that bans AI-generated work. Pixelfed is an ad-free Instagram rival where users can join different servers, or communities, including one for art that does not allow AI-generated content. Spread is a new social media platform with content for people who want to “access human ideas” and “escape the flood of AI slop.”

Watch out for the upcoming launch of diVine, a reboot of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s defunct short-form video app Vine. The app has only been available as a limited prerelease for Apple iOS. It promises “No AI Slop” and uses multiple approaches to detect AI. An Android beta app is expected soon. The company plans to launch it in app stores soon but needs more time to get ready for unexpectedly high demand.

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—Kelvin Chan, AP business writer

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