A.I. Slop and How to Spot It

"Having over 25 years of experience in I.T. and web development, I can say with confidence: A.I. is awesome. I've spent more hours than I care to count hand-writing HTML, building CSS styles, troubleshooting JavaScript, and spending weeks debugging code, days fine-tuning thousands of individual points on a vector graphic, learning hundreds of rules, standards and file formats, and developing the technical skills required to take an idea and actually turn it into something that works.

As an early adopter of A.I., I've had a front-row seat to just how quickly this technology has evolved. I opened an OpenAI account when the technology first became publicly available and have watched it grow from something that was fascinating but often limited; into a tool that has fundamentally changed the way I work. I've spent countless hours experimenting with it, pushing its capabilities, learning where it excels and, just as importantly, where it still falls short.

When A.I. can help accomplish in minutes something that once took hours, I'm not offended by it—I'm amazed by it. I use it constantly, and I've learned a tremendous amount working with it. But having spent decades in the industry you realize something, making something easier to create doesn't automatically make someone an expert at creating it. A.I. can dramatically accelerate the process, but it doesn't replace the experience required to recognize when the result is actually good. The tools may have changed dramatically. The value of experience, judgment and knowing what good work looks like hasn't."

There is a growing backlash surrounding Artificial Intelligence.

Some of it is directed toward the enormous infrastructure being built to support it. AI data centers have become the subject of increasingly public fights involving electricity demand, water use, pollution, utility costs and the impact these facilities can have on surrounding communities.

Some of the backlash is economic. Some of it is about jobs. Some of it is about authenticity.

And increasingly, some of it is simply exhaustion from being surrounded by enormous amounts of low-quality AI-generated content.

For businesses, that last part matters.

YOUR CUSTOMERS DON'T NECESSARILY HATE AI. THEY HATE SLOP.

That's an important distinction.

Fake-looking people. Overproduced social graphics. Generic motivational posts. Meaningless marketing language. Websites assembled from endless variations of the same cards. AI voices reading AI scripts over AI video while animated AI captions bounce across the screen.

Individually, none of those things automatically makes something bad.

But when a company's entire presence begins to feel synthetic, generic and mass-produced, that starts becoming part of the brand.

The problem isn't that your company uses AI. The problem is when your customers can tell you stopped doing the work.

We've Seen This Movie Before

REMEMBER THE WORDPRESS "DEVELOPER"?

Web developers have already lived through a version of this.

WordPress dramatically lowered the barrier to publishing a professional-looking website.

That was a good thing.

It also created an enormous industry of people who learned how to install a theme, change a logo and modify a few settings—and began billing themselves as web developers.

If you had spent enough years actually developing websites, you could usually spot the difference.

The navigation was janky.

Someone changed the menu color but forgot about the rollover state.

A button looked great until you hovered over it and suddenly the text disappeared.

Spacing worked beautifully in the original template but fell apart once actual client content was inserted.

And when something needed to be changed below the surface, everything came to a stop.

AI didn't make that person an expert. It just gave the template tweaker a new template.

AI HAS CREATED THE SAME PROBLEM AT AN INDUSTRIAL SCALE.

Today, generative AI can produce an attractive hero section, write the headline, create the photograph, generate six feature cards, code the interface, write the social post and turn the whole thing into a video.

That's extraordinary technology.

But generating those things and understanding design, communication, hierarchy, UX, development, branding and marketing are two very different things.

AI can produce the ingredients.

Experience is still required to know what should actually go on the plate.

SO SHOULD BUSINESSES STOP USING AI?

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

That would miss the point entirely.

AI may be one of the most significant productivity tools introduced during our careers.

A designer can explore ideas faster.

A developer can prototype faster.

A writer can organize information faster.

A marketer can analyze possibilities faster.

A business owner can accomplish things that previously required substantially more time and money.

We use it.

We appreciate it.

And we expect it to become increasingly integrated into the tools businesses use every day.

AI can be a substitute for effort, or it can be a multiplier of effort.

That's the distinction that matters.

Sources & Further Reading

Gartner: 2026 consumer research on AI-generated marketing content, brand trust and changing consumer attitudes toward AI-generated media.

Google Search Central: Guidance on generative AI content, people-first content and scaled content abuse.

Reuters: Reporting on growing community resistance surrounding AI data-center development, electricity demand, water use and environmental impact.