AI slop: The perfect fodder for uninspiring, mediocre times

Monday, 1 June 2026

James Bush is a womenswear designer and regular opinion contributor.

OPINION: There is a slightly tacky and overly floral style of writing that is seeping into everyday communication. One can see it in paragraphs with too many infinitives, or false precision created through enumeration, where examples are stacked one on top of another for dramatic effect. “It is not X, it is Y. It is not A, it is B.” Ghastly.

It projects a sense of authority but it often leads the reader feeling a little confused about what the words in front of them actually mean.

A similar pattern is happening in design too, from fashion to interiors. Visual references are piled on top of each other, ostensibly indicating an historic era or epoque, but the outcome is usually messy and lacking in the desired panache.

It is, of course, AI slop infiltrating every aspect of our lives. We, the sheep, are writing, designing and making exactly what we are told to, and it ain’t that great.

Read more:

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• Give me a Stella, a mocha or a pie and Coke, but take care with your judgment

There is a suggestion that AI will usher forth the end of days for creativity, but I completely disagree. Much of the West has been living in the world of McKinsey’s generic corporate speak and the homogenised design language of Ikea and H&M for a good couple of decades now and people are genuinely tired of it. The AI slop isn’t the tip of the iceberg, it’s the last of the dregs.

Author Cory Doctorow develops the concept of the centaur vs the reverse centaur. The former refers to a human-AI collaboration where the human is in control. The human is the head while the AI is the body doing the work. The reverse centaur is the opposite. The AI is nominally in control with the human underneath it doing the grunt work.

It sounds post-apocalyptic, but it’s here. Warehouse workers whose every move is governed or monitored by AI, or as seen in a recent article in the Financial Times, revealing that top-tier UK law firm Pinsent Masons had been rebuked by London’s High Court after making false submissions to a judge based on AI. Oopsie daisy.

Those of us who use AI on a daily basis increasingly do the monotonous tasks of checking the accuracy of the AI information, and must then take responsibility when the results are incorrect. One major problem with AI is that it doesn’t always get the small stuff right

For the most part, however, corporate bosses don’t really know what they want from AI beyond making the impossible sums add up so that revenues increase and costs go down. Ideally resulting in fewer people doing more work. Under such scenarios the human workforce is left to do the average, unproductive work of prompting, creating digestible inputs, and fact checking what comes out. Far from fulfilling, and certainly not the kind of thing that will usher in the productivity revolution.

AI slop doesn’t inspire when it comes to politics either. PM Luxon already feels bland, scripted, almost like he was designed to deliver the average of all things… or at least the average of all things a middle ground voter might already think. The problem is that democracy, like design, was supposed to inspire people, to achieve what hadn’t previously been possible.

If AI outputs sound like a McKinsey consultant it’s because they share a common trait. Neither of them has ever had to take responsibility for a decision that’s made in the real world. They live in the world of text and images. Their job is done as soon as the slide deck is delivered, while the consequences of their dodgy guidance tend to arrive later and sit on someone else’s shoulder.

A wonderfully apt example would be the Government’s decision to cut 8700 jobs and maintain service levels by using AI. Where will the axe fall and how will those services be delivered? Somebody else’s problem….

Politics is uninspiring for the same reason that AI slop is depressing. Both seem incapable of being new or inventive. It’s likely that the upcoming election will be the biggest yawn fest on record, despite coming at a time when we need a visionary leader more than anything. The computer says no… I guess?

The logical and perhaps only response to AI is a return to craft, to making and doing, because we’ve been riding the wave of generic product for long enough. After all, when asked to produce written work, AI’s grandiose turn of phrase often lacks substance and, when probed, often means nothing at all.