Sept. 23, 2026

Question: What’s wrong with AI-generated writing? Why do some people call it “slop”?

Yesterday, I sat through a webinar where nearly all of the slide content and even the presenter’s script were AI-generated.

In my haughty view, it was pure slop.

At first, I thought to myself, “I can still learn from this if I just push past that realization. There may still be something useful in here.”

But I couldn’t do it.

Once I realized that the wording came from AI, the presenter lost all credibility in my eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder if everything about the presentation, including the topic, structure, concepts, and “insights” were all AI output as well.

I should address two questions…

1. How do I know it was AI-generated?

The prototypical AI writing cadence is painfully obvious to anyone who uses LLMs regularly. Here, I’ll show you…

(I’m slightly changing the wording to disguise the identity of the consulting firm that presented this, since I would be embarrassed if I were them.)

Slightly Disguised AI Slop:

“Selling without a framework isn’t just inefficient; it’s quietly eroding your bottom line.
▪ Weak positioning caps your earning potential before you ever discuss a price.
▪ Poor qualification turns weeks of work into months of waiting.
▪ Premature proposals are politely—and permanently—ignored.”

The AI tells are everywhere. This was clearly copy/pasted verbatim from a conversation with a chatbot.

If you use LLMs regularly, it’s as obvious to you as it was to me.

2. What’s wrong with copy/pasting AI output?

Here’s my take on why people disagree about the quality of AI output…

If you think ChatGPT is a better writer than you, then you’re more likely to think AI writing is good.

In fairness, it is good, at least relative to you.

If you think you’re a better writer than ChatGPT, then you’re more likely to think AI writing is bad.

And maybe it is bad relative to you.

I think this is a key reason why many people, myself included, cringe when we read AI-generated text.

But more fundamentally, I think it’s empty.

Sure, we humans can and do hallucinate meaning in chatbot output all the time, but that doesn’t make the underlying process itself meaning-generating. As has been said many times, it’s like highly sophisticated predictive text.

Maybe that’s why my eyes glaze over the moment I spot the characteristic tells.

In any particular interaction with another person, I implicitly assume that I will be exposed to human thought or even just consciousness. When I realize that’s not what’s happening, I disengage.

Why would I want to interact with a person who functions solely as a conduit to a chatbot?

If I wanted to know what a chatbot would say, I’d just go to a chatbot…