Likely many other, I’ve been grossed out by some of the shit getting churned out with generative ai. But it’s also made me notice some of the existing things that give me the same feeling.

Poorly translated stuff, as often seen on cheap Chinese imports, has the same uncanny valley awkwardness. It sounds like English, but it isn’t what an actual human who spoke English would say. And if we want to talk about an algorithm that’s gone rogue and is destroying the world while trying to fulfill some arbitary metrics, there’s always late-stage capitalism…

Anyone else notice things like this?

  • presoak@lazysoci.aldeleted by creator
    0·
    11 months ago

    100 years of video advertising. Here let me rub this on your eyeballs.

  • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    The a absolute epitome of non-AI slop has got to be these creepy videos that were on YouTube back in ~2017:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate

    Its exactly the kind of thing you’d expect would be the product of AI, but it actually came before AI. I think a lot of it was procedurally generated though, using scripts to control 3D software and editing software, so different character models could be used in the same scenes and different scenes could be strung together to make each video.

    I think a similar thing happens with those shovelware Android games. There’s so many that are just the same game with (incredibly poorly done) asset swaps that I think they must just make a game once and then automatically generate a thousand+ variations on it.

  • DickFiasco@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    11 months ago

    The “cooking blog” style where a simple answer to a simple question has to be padded with eight paragraphs of garbage. Like, I just want to know how to put a comment in a YAML file. I don’t need a table of contents for this, I don’t need to hear a brief history of how the comment was invented, just tell me the character to type.

      • Bongles@lemmy.zip
        0·
        11 months ago

        When it was recipes they claimed it was copyright related. If another site stole your whole recipe plus the story you know it’s stolen. Just saying to hard boil eggs, split em, add mayo and mustard… well that’s just any deviled eggs.

    • MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.worldEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Comedic actors being desperate to take a dramatic turn often leads to this kind of slop, especially in the case of Will Farrell. There’s a whole era of films he did that’s bizarre and “cringey”, including that insane Woody Allen film. He said the lifetime movie was a satire…but there’s a certain amount of hubris involved in believing he could pull it off.

    • fonix232@fedia.io
      0·
      11 months ago

      Also included in this: the thousands upon thousands of mobile games that are literally the same exact game with minor asset switching.

      Like, 99% of those “town/castle/whatever building” games that have fixed locations for buildings etc., they’re all based on maybe 2-3 white label game “engines” that are ready to be re-labelled with new assets, new logos, new story (even though the story events driving it are the same, the “side dish” storytelling changes minimally).

      This also goes for pretty much any game format that becomes trending. You can bet your tushie that the moment a game format is even just borderline popular… there will be a dozen or so Chinese software houses copying the mechanics and looks and behaviour, and within a week you can buy a white label version of it for a few thousand dollars.

    • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      11 months ago

      Also why the hell is this a thing? Those ads are showing gameplay, it would be so much easier to make that game and then take a video of it for the advert than to just make an animation of it. So in my mind the game exists. Why is it just Mafia Wars reskinned every fucking time?

      • Iunnrais@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        Because “mafia wars” makes consistent money, and the games people actually might want to play don’t. Slapping a new coat of paint on the same mechanics over and over again means getting the money maker out there to more people, just gotta lure em in with the promise of a game they might actually want to play, then swap in the game they don’t and hope you snag em with the psychological tricks before they leave.

        It works just often enough to make it profitable and easy.

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@slrpnk.net
        0·
        11 months ago

        He didn’t ghostwrite that, his name is on it. He also worked closely with Harriet, and had access to Robert’s notes including whole sections already written. See also Brian Henson making Muppet Christmas Carol and Treasure Island, or Christopher Tolkien publishing supplements to the Silmarillion. Care, authorship, and intimacy abound. Not slop.

        Compare with “New Hardy Boys” or the Dune prequels (which may have Brian Herbert’s name on the cover but was clearly ghostwritten in large part). Slop.

        • blackbrook@mander.xyz
          0·
          11 months ago

          Weren’t the original Hardy Boys slop from the start? It’s been a while since I read about it, but I think I remember reading that they were kind of cynically churned out by some paid hack, and occasionally revised to keep them from getting too dated. (Human slop generating practices have gotten worse over the years, tho)