OpenAI just closed down Sora, one of those AI slop video generation tools. AI video generation is relative resource intensive, and OpenAI lost huge amounts of money on it, while receiving very little revenue. Now they could have kept Sora, and just raised the price to at least break even. But that price would have been eye-watering, and would have destroyed the myth that AI is a cheap way to replace humans. So the first threat to the AI slop business model is that cheap or free image/video generation is on its way out.

But the bigger problem is probably on the revenue generation side. If you think of for example the monetization of free products like the Google search engine, it works because your input of a question into Google has a value. If you are searching for the best headphones, chances are that you would be willing to spend money on some headphones; Google is able to either sell that information to the right people, or even more bluntly steer you towards the headphones somebody paid them to advertise. The monetization of social media like YouTube works by assuming engagement: If I click on a video with a review for a board game, I am probably interested in that board game, and at least engaged in the board game hobby. Again, that can be used by YouTube to serve me advertising on whatever interests me, increasing the chance that I click on the advertisement and buy stuff.

OpenAI is not getting any valuable or sellable information by somebody using Sora to generate an AI slop video. And on YouTube that video might get a lot of clicks, but the engagement is very shallow. What advertising do you serve somebody clicking on Shrimp Jesus? Sea food? Chances are, they are more grossed out by the images than interested in any product.

Ultimately the whole AI slop business chain consists of a number of steps, none of which is actually creating any real value. The people using the AI image/video tools aren't buying anything and aren't willing to pay much for their low effort content creation business. The people clicking on those images and videos aren't engaged, and create just empty clicks of no value to advertisers. The real cost to generate the AI slop by far exceeds the economic value created by it. The people paying that cost are the investors in the AI companies and the advertising companies, and both of these will one day realize that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Shrimp Jesus has feet of clay, economically speaking.