In Defense of AI Slop

Vibe coded projects and AI written content being dismissed as "slop" just doesn't sit right with me, in fact, I would almost consider it a slur. Because AI assisted coding, art, writing, creation in general, isn't about taking shortcuts. It's about access. Let me explain, and first, a little background on me.

I spent ten years at the University of Florida because I literally couldn't stop learning. I studied Art and Art History, and I was especially interested in how shifts in medium shape culture, perception, and power. While I was getting my Master's, I was also teaching at the university. That part came naturally to me because I like taking something complex, understanding it, and then helping other people understand it too.

After school I moved to NYC and joined a customer success team at a startup tech company. I liked it because I could learn the technology quickly, understand how it worked, and then help other people use it. Eventually I moved into a more mature SaaS company, got more technical and more involved with the product, and moved into product implementation. I was learning constantly, working closely with product, thinking creatively about how systems could be used in ways that weren't obvious, and then teaching customers how to make it work in their world. I still work in SaaS, specifically for an IoT company that builds data infrastructure, and I'm loving the opportunity to learn AI while on the job (for more reasons than one...cough cough...job security).

Anyways, if you've made it this far into my diatribe, you won't be shocked to hear that I love AI. It sits right in the middle of everything I'm wired to do. I can build. I can take something abstract and make it real. I have agency. The learning never stops because the tech changes constantly. And I can teach. I can translate it so other people can use it too.

Which brings me back to my defense of "AI slop." There is a foundational text by Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), where he introduces the idea that "the medium is the message." The core idea is that the real impact of any new technology is not the content it produces, but the way it changes scale, speed, and social and political frameworks and discourse. That matters here. Because AI is not just changing how something sounds (ie. this sounds like it was written by AI). It is changing who gets to participate and how quickly something can go from idea to execution. That is the actual shift and that is meaningful.

The title of this essay is borrowed from Hito Steyerl's In Defense of the Poor Image (2009), and the connection is intentional. Steyerl argued that low-resolution, degraded images circulating online were dismissed as inferior, but that their very "poorness" was what made them accessible, shareable, and democratic. The poor image escaped the gallery, escaped the archive, escaped the gatekeeper. AI slop is the same argument in a new medium. The thing people dismiss as low-quality is the thing that gives more people access.

There is a long history in art where adopting new methods of creation expands access. When new mediums emerge, they don't just change aesthetics, they change who gets to participate and what can be said. Print expanded who could read and distribute ideas. Photography reshaped how we understand truth and documentation. Digital media broke down distribution entirely. AI fits into that same lineage. It gives people access to communication, to building, to organizing, to creating in ways that were previously limited by skill, time, or resources. I am choosing to lean into that, not dismiss it.

And what's happening right now with vibe coding and AI produced content proves it. People are not just building for themselves. They're sharing what they make, open sourcing their projects, building in public, teaching each other how to do it. Communities are forming around tools and methods that didn't exist a year ago. It feels like the early internet again, when the whole promise was that anyone could create, distribute, and connect without asking permission. That energy got swallowed by platforms and walled gardens. AI is bringing it back. The slop people are dismissing is actually the foundation of a new wave of open, collaborative, community-driven creation (for now at least).

I'm tired of seeing ideas dismissed because it "feels like it was written by AI." This way of thinking just prevents a person from engaging with the thing itself. It is a lazy refusal to understand a concept bigger than the method in which it was made. It assumes that if something reads a certain way, the thinking behind it must be shallow. That's just not true. The writing, the coding, the method is the vehicle. The real work is the idea, the structure, the decisions, and the fact that something now exists that didn't before.

There's this underlying belief that effort only counts if it's manual and visible, like you have to struggle through the writing, the coding, the creation for it to be valid. That idea has been challenged before. Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, written in 1935 (wrap your head around that), argued that when new technologies make creation and reproduction more accessible, they fundamentally shift how we assign value to art. The "aura" tied to originality and traditional production starts to break down, and art moves closer to mass participation, circulation, and political potential. That shift was uncomfortable then, just like this one is now. But it also expanded who could engage, create, and distribute meaning. It created access that was not there before.

What's happening is people are focusing on the content and missing the shift in the medium. The real change isn't how something sounds. It's that someone can now go from idea to execution faster than ever before. That's the message. And instead of recognizing that, people fixate on whether the output feels generic. It's the same mistake people have always made with new technology. They focus on surface instead of structure.

And honestly, AI is one of the first tools that gives people access to articulation who didn't have it before. There are a lot of people with strong ideas who are not strong writers (in the same way that there are artists who cannot paint). Before, those ideas just stayed stuck in minds or came out poorly. Now they can be communicated. Dismissing that as "slop" is a quiet form of gatekeeping, whether people realize it or not (hence why I referred to it as a slur earlier).

At the end of the day, I care about one thing. Did something real get built, and does the idea hold up. If yes, then the rest is noise. The ability to go from concept to execution is not something to hide. It's the advantage. If someone is more focused on how it sounds than what it says, and more powerfully what it DOES in this world, they're evaluating the wrong layer entirely. And they're probably missing the point.

Written by Molly Edwards, although it's really none of your business. Did you get the message?