With the proliferation of artificial intelligence in our lives, there have been lots of new terms popping up to describe what AI has been used for. One of those is “AI slop.” If you haven’t heard of that, it essentially means: Sloppy digital content that’s quickly generated and lacks any real creative effort or meaning.
For instance, “Shrimp Jesus” was a bizarre trend from a few years back that promoted a mash up of Jesus with crustaceans in AI-generated images. Wikipedia justifiably spotlights that viral trend as an excellent example of slop.
Anyway, there’s a new, specialized spin-off of AI slop currently making the rounds: Grandmaslop. And no, that’s not a novel AI trend of mixing up grammy’s picture with a pig in mud. Grandmaslop is actually a set of constructs created by a rising tide of baby boomers who are enthusiastically dabbling in AI as a connection point to their family.
What Kind of Slop?
Grandparents might give an AI bot some pics of the grandkids, for instance, and ask it to generate a little comic book or storybook portraying the tykes as superheroes or as space adventurers. Or grandma might ask AI to create a fake photo album that depicts little junior sitting with her on the back of an elephant in Africa.
From gramps and grammy’s perspective, these little AI-generated ditties help them feel like they’re staying connected. They’re hip, cool oldsters. They use AI with a wink and a smile. And they hope to reach out to extended family members that might be off in another state somewhere and hard to get to. So why not use today’s tech for a little fun?
However, there are millennial and Gen Z parents who aren’t happy in the least. In fact, they’re downright fuming over the trend.
Down With Slop
Some of the growls and grumbles have been over the poor quality of those rapidly slapped-together images from free AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude. We’ve all seen AI characters with extra fingers, or legs that bend at peculiar angles.
However, others express privacy concerns that the grandparents aren’t considering. And that’s a realistic issue. After all (as we here at Plugged In have mentioned in the past) anything you feed to AI doesn’t simply disappear after use. The owners of said AI can often legally keep and use whatever you hand over to their bots. And many parents justifiably don’t want pics of their kids swimming all over the internet.
A recent techradar.com post pointed to a Reddit user’s question that raises another area of concern about grandmaslop:
“I think the weirdest part is, if photos are our way of immortalizing a moment in time for the sake of our memories, then what is an AI-generated image, if it’s a moment of time that never existed?”
Perhaps, that Reddit commentator’s question should be one that all sides of the grandmaslop issue can consider. Or to put it another way: How much time are we actually spending together?
Get Together Minus the Slop
The one thing that stays consistent in this generation—laden with technology, AI and social media—is the fact that all of our whiz-bang tech can help us connect, butit can isolate us at the same time. And that’s true for kids with a smartphone in their mitts and the grandma who’s trying to figure out that fancy new app on her fancy new laptop.
We all need connection. Human brains and bodies are hard-wired for the stuff. Social interaction is a fundamental requirement for survival, health and happiness. Studies show that isolation can cause health risks. However, they also reveal that people with strong social connections have a 50% higher likelihood of surviving serious health issues. That’s particularly true for family members.
Making time for and investing in one another will reap positive dividends in many ways. So, figure out how to get together. Make the drive. Take the flight. Spend the time. It’s not always easy. And it may require extra effort, a little sacrifice. But taking the grandkids to a real, live zoo (or even a neighborhood park), will help you create real, live memories and generate real, live pictures.
And then, creating grandmaslop and grumbling over it will be completely unnecessary.
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