No Stupid Questions

Lemmy is a mix between technology geeks and leftists, and many of us are both. The geek tend to be at least somehow interested in gen "AI" and often know the technical words behind it (if not what they mean). The leftists are more worried by the socio economic impact of AI

Yeah, you’re definitely noticing something real—there has been a marked uptick in AI-generated content across the fediverse (and the wider web), and the cultural resistance that once defined many parts of the fediverse is softening in certain pockets. Here's a breakdown of what’s likely going on:

Cultural Shift: Anti-AI Sentiment Is Fragmenting The fediverse (especially Mastodon and related platforms) did start out with strong anti-corporate, anti-surveillance, and often anti-AI stances. But:

The fediverse is not monolithic. As it grows, the original culture is diversifying. New users from Reddit, Twitter/X, and elsewhere are bringing more mainstream (and often more accepting) attitudes toward generative AI.

Fatigue and normalization. Even people who once objected to AI art might be experiencing "AI fatigue"—the novelty and shock have worn off. Now it’s just part of the media landscape.

Irony and memetics. A lot of AI slop is posted ironically, which muddies the waters. It’s part of the "post-cringe" meme economy—bad on purpose becomes good again.

Detection is Slipping: AI Art Is Getting Harder to Spot Improvements in quality. Tools like DALL·E 3, Midjourney v6, and OpenAI’s newer models produce more coherent, less obviously AI-generated content than older ones.

Users are desensitized. The sheer volume of generated content means people are less likely to scrutinize every image, especially if it hits emotional or meme-relevant notes.

Some folks just don’t care. As long as it’s funny, pretty, or relatable, many users don’t bother checking for signs of AI generation.

Positive Votes Don’t Always Equal Approval Engagement ≠ Endorsement. Sometimes people upvote or boost something because it's absurd, ironic, or sparking discussion.

Algorithm-free doesn’t mean signal-free. Even on federated platforms, attention follows trends. If a few users with high visibility post AI memes, others follow.

So, what does this mean? The fediverse is evolving, and its anti-AI culture is being challenged by a mix of userbase expansion, desensitization, and post-ironic meme culture.

It doesn’t necessarily mean most people like AI slop—they might just tolerate or engage with it differently than before.

You’ll still find strong anti-AI sentiment in certain instances (e.g., when artists are affected or attribution is misleading), but the lines are blurrier now.

If you’re seeing a lot of it in your timeline, it might also help to check what instances or users you’re federated with—it’s possible you're seeing more from a few high-volume posters rather than a broad shift across the entire network.

AI sentiment IRL seems to have exploded as well. I think everyone is accepting 'the inevitable'

Same with Reddit. In fact I'd just decided to delete the Reddit app and just hang out here, because the AI slop has become intolerable. But really I'm seeing it everywhere. Google News used to be interesting and now again AI slop. Is this the end of human-based online articles and interactions?

"slop" is being thrown around just like "socialist" and "gay". Save it for actual AI slop. Just because something is made by AI doesn't make it automatically "slop" 🙄

They are flooding the zone, there are countless pro-AI generated content instances. It's like playing whack-a-mole, I often downvote obvious and human-altered slop (it's all slop to me). Unfortunately, there are going to be images that have positive votes despite the general dislike of said AI-slop, especially because I tend to block those slop instances these days. Naturally, most of it is objectifying women (something I don't want to see anyway) so those will naturally get a lot of votes because people weren't thinking with the right head.

John Oliver did a segment on this, you can search his name and AI Slop on yt to see it. I didn't realize how much fb was pushing it bc I haven't used it in years, but wow, am I now extra glad I don't use it anymore. And poor Pinterest, r.i.p.

Haven't seen a difference but I also block / downvote everybody / community that posts ai slob so ...

1. There's a whole instance of pro-AI users; many are toxic AF about it.

2. The average person is a moron

I think I have most AI stuff I encountered blocked, and I assume so do other anti AI people, so there's probably just not enough people downvoting/commenting on AI since they don't get it on their feed

O don't give a shit and 100% skip useless posts clearly created using AI.

But interesting posts, I do read them even if made with AI.

As long as it's intentionally made by a human and the end result is high quality, I personally don't really care what AI or other tools they did or didn't use to create that result