As an elder millennial, I’ve tried to avoid TikTok because of its documented brainrot potential and despite the fact that it means missing out on an endless supply of fun and strangely specific memes. But somehow, little short-form vertical videos keep finding their way to me.

Whether they’re on Instagram, Netflix, or Pinterest, swipeable smartphone-shaped videos have taken over the internet. They’re also showing up in places you wouldn’t expect, like Spotify, LinkedIn, and even the New York Times. And whether you enjoy these bite-size bits of content or not, the situation is about to get much weirder.

The dark future of vertical video

In the near future, the internet may not only be wall-to-wall little videos. Those little videos may also be filled with slop, the term for AI-generated garbage content that is perhaps even more insidious in robbing us of our attention.

Last week, Google started rolling out its Veo 3 AI-powered video generation model, which can create eight-second clips, complete with realistic soundtracks, based on text prompts. After creating a dozen videos of her own, including some for kids, Allison Johnson at the Verge called this tool “a slop monger’s dream” that’s “more than a little creepy and way more sophisticated” than she’d imagined. String together a few of these clips, and you’ve got a piece of short-form content perfect for TikTok or any of its antecedents that took mere minutes to create. YouTube announced last month that the tool would be built right into its own TikTok clone, YouTube Shorts. These videos are already taking over short-form video platforms. Some of them are racist.

AI slop may soon also dominate the ads you’re served on these platforms, too. These ads, while currently laughable, will get much better, according to Mark Zuckerberg, who says Meta will completely automate the creation of ads and even make it possible for ads to exist in infinite versions and evolve based on when and where a person sees them. And as algorithmic feeds of........

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