One in three YouTube Shorts is AI slop. The resistance is baking.

If you sign up for a brand new YouTube account today, a third of the first 500 YouTube Shorts shown to you will be AI slop, according to a report from Kapwing. Over 1.3 billion videos were labeled as AI-generated on TikTok as of February. The algorithm didn't flood your feed because you wanted it. It's baked in the way microplastics are in your food — just a default ingredient now.

Some people are fighting it. Pansino, a baker with 21 million-plus followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, physically recreates the AI food videos showing up in everyone's feeds, then puts the two side by side. "We're getting dimensions that AI could never," she says. Jeremy Carrasco, with 870,000 followers across those same platforms, debunks viral AI videos by pointing out tells: weird jump cuts, continuity issues, a lens flare that doesn't track right. "Most people aren't spending their time analyzing videos like I am," Carrasco says. "So if it hits their subconscious, 'This looks real,' their brain might shut off there."

On LinkedIn, the problem runs through "engagement pods" — groups using AI automation tools to spray AI-generated posts across hundreds of accounts at once. LinkedIn has removed "hundreds of LinkedIn groups" displaying these behaviors in just the past few months. The top slop accounts, Kapwing estimates, are pulling in millions of dollars in ad income per year. The machine is profitable. The bakers are doing it for the rush.