A fresh-account test by Kapwing found 59% of TikTok For You videos were AI slop, roughly three times the rate on YouTube Shorts at 21%. As feeds fill with low-effort AI content, genuinely good content stands out more, not less. The flood is an opening for brands willing to make something real.
When the feed is mostly sludge, the few things that are clearly made by a human with something to say stop competing for attention. They start winning it.
The feeds are filling with sludge. A fresh-account test by Kapwing found 59% of TikTok For You videos were AI slop, defined as videos with obvious AI-generated visuals or low-quality compilations built on AI scripts and voiceovers. On the same test YouTube Shorts came in at 21%, so TikTok is serving roughly three times the rate.
The number that should bother any parent is separate. Kapwing found 57.4% of TikTok videos aimed at children hit the same slop threshold.
Why it matters
The lazy read is that AI has ruined the platforms and good content is drowning. The truer read is the opposite. As the cost of making forgettable content drops to zero, the supply of forgettable content explodes, and forgettable is exactly what people scroll past. Scarcity moves to the thing the machine cannot fake, which is a real point of view made well.
Share of TikTok For You videos found to be AI slop in a fresh-account test, against 21% on YouTube Shorts
For Australian brands tempted to flood their channels with cheap AI video because it is fast and free, this is the warning. You are not standing out. You are adding to the pile people are already tuning out, and the algorithm and the audience are both learning to skip it.
What to do about it
Make less and make it matter. One video with a real insight beats ten AI compilations. The flood means quality is the scarce thing, so spend your effort where it is scarce.
Use AI to do the work, not to be the work. Speed up editing, drafting and ideation. Do not hand the audience the raw output and call it content.
Lead with a point of view the machine cannot generate. Your specific experience, your specific data, your specific take. That is the thing slop cannot copy because it does not have it.
Watch your own numbers, not the trend. If your engagement is sliding while your output is rising, you are making slop. Cut the volume and lift the standard.
The platforms are drowning in content that costs nothing and says nothing. That is not a threat to brands with something real to say. It is the clearest opening they have had in years. The bar to stand out just dropped, because almost nobody else is trying to clear it.