• More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

    Low-quality AI-generated content is now saturating social media – and generating about $117m a year, data showsMore than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.
  • From shrimp Jesus to erotic tractors: how viral AI slop took over the internet

    Flood of unreality is an endpoint of algorithm-driven internet and product of an economy dependent on a few top tech firms In the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man’s shrimp Jesus is another man’s side hustle.AI slop – the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views – is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Merriam-Webster’s word of the year this year is “slop”, referri
  • ‘It brings you closer to the natural world’: the rise of the Merlin birdsong identifying app

    Merlin has been trained to identify the songs of more than 1,300 bird species around the worldWhen Natasha Walter first became curious about the birds around her, she recorded their songs on her phone and arduously tried to match each song with online recordings. After a friend recommended Merlin Bird ID, a free app, she tried it in her London garden and was delighted to discover the birds she assumed were female blackbirds – “this is how bad a birder I was” – were actual
  • London Eye architect proposes 14-mile tidal power station off Somerset coast

    West Somerset Lagoon would harness renewable energy for UK’s AI boom – and create ‘iconic’ arc around Bristol ChannelThe architect of the London Eye wants to build a vast tidal power station in a 14-mile arc off the coast of Somerset that could help Britain meet surging electricity demand to power artificial intelligence – and create a new race track to let cyclists skim over the Bristol Channel.Julia Barfield, who designed the Eye and the i360 observation tower in
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