Generate AI slop content

As part of his 2025 exhibition Proof of Concept, Jon Rafman made the video-installation Main Stream Media Network “that reimagines television for the AI age”. Spread across multiple subdivisions, videos were shown inspired by the heyday of MTV and contemporary online video. The subdivision Slop TV broadcast videos based on viral online footage. This work touches on ideas such as the dead internet theory—a conspiracy theory claiming that most of the internet’s content and activity is no longer created by humans, but by bots, AI, and automated systems.

About the artist

Jon Rafman is an artist and filmmaker whose work examines the effects of contemporary technology, particularly on interpersonal relationships.

Link

https://jonrafman.com/

Exercise

Scroll through an online short form video feed (such as TikTok or YouTube Shorts) with a new account (or not logged in) and download or list the urls of videos you would deem “slop” (AI or not). So videos that feel generic, uninspired or designed as low-effort bait to make the viewer stick around when scrolling through a feed. From this large pool, create a collection around a certain video format, like slime ASMR or mukbangs for example.
Then try to recreate these videos with tools like Sora or RunwayML, or make new videos that would fit your collection.
Compare your AI-generated videos to the ones in your collection. Are your videos just as engaging as the ones from your collection? How hard or easy was it to get your prompts right? Did the platform you used to generate your videos already have an understanding of the content you wanted to create? What did it get right or wrong? Do you feel you have a deeper understanding of how these videos function or why they are popular? What elements in the video are essential to make them engaging to the viewer?