Wait, YouTube is cracking down on mass-produced and repetitious content? That’s bad news for [insert artist or YouTube channel that you don’t like here] eh? we give you this joke to use for free.
But there’s a serious point here, even if the news isn’t quite the major crackdown that some social-media chatter has suggested. It stems from a recent note on YouTube’s policy updates page.
“In order to monetize as part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), YouTube has always required creators to upload ‘original’ and ‘authentic’ content,” it explained.
“On July 15, 2025, YouTube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update better reflects what ‘inauthentic’ content looks like today.
While the term isn’t used, this has been widely interpreted as referring to ‘AI slop’ – low-quality videos churned out using GenAI tools. Although we’d like to champion more use of the term ‘human slop’ because (for now) these AIs aren’t sentient: it’s humans using those tools to flood the web with filler content.
Anyway, YouTube is keen to dampen down hopes of a crackdown on AI/human slop. “This is a minor update to YouTube’s long-standing YPP policies to help better identify when content is mass-produced or repetitive,” said YouTube’s rene Ritchie in a video posted yesterday.
“This type of content has already been ineligible for monetisation for years,and is content viewers often consider spam. That’s it.”
that’s it for now, perhaps.But youtube and every other big digital service – spotify and its fellow music streamers included – is facing up to the challenges posed by what we may have to start calling Peak Slop Era.
The recent, rapid rise of The Velvet Sundown and other AI-generated artists is highlighting those challenges in music – see also Deezer’s claim that GenAI music is now 18% of its daily uploads, if only 0.5% of its actual streams. But video services and social networks are also dealing with thier own slop mountains.
YouTube has been flying the flag for AI as a tool that boost humans’ creativity: for example in its Cannes lions keynote when it announced that Google’s Veo 3 model will soon be available for people to use in their YouTube Shorts videos.
An influx of slop is the unappealing flipside to that. Just as music rightsholders are concerned about the impact it may have on human artists, so YouTube creators and brands are increasingly unsettled about AI slop competing with their videos – not least for the affections of YouTube’s recommendation algorithms.
In both cases, creators and rightsholders are looking to the platforms for clear policies and (if required) firm action. YouTube’s declaration may be a minor update,but it’s part of a bigger,crucial trend across the digital media world.
