Spend just a few minutes scrolling through today’s social media feeds, and you’re bound to stumble on a new breed of video: short, brightly animated clips that seem to come from nowhere, flood your recommendations, and rack up millions of views. These are the so-called “AI slop” videos, and whether you love them or hate them, there’s no denying they’re changing the way content, and even money, flows on the internet.
At the center of this phenomenon is Mark Lawrence I Garilao, a 21-year-old computer science student in the Philippines. His YouTube channel, FUNTASTIC YT, is a case study in the rise of AI-generated content. Dozens of his videos star an animated kitten and its buff, perpetually exasperated feline dad. The plots are simple—sometimes nonsensical. In one, the kitten eyes a backyard swimming pool full of rainbow goo and asks, “Dad, can I swim in this slime pool?” The dad, neck-deep and stuck in the pool, replies, “No son, I’m stuck. Please help me.” And that’s it. The video ends, and viewers—over two million of them for just this one clip—move on to the next oddball adventure.
According to BERITAJA and NPR, Garilao’s channel is emblematic of a broader trend: AI slop videos are being churned out at a rapid pace, often with little artistic or narrative ambition, but with an eye for what the algorithm likes. “I don’t think this video exists for any creative, any expressive, any informational or educational reason. It’s purely to be engaged with,” Adam Bumas of the tech newsletter Garbage Day told NPR. Jason Koebler, co-founder of 404Media, added, “AI is really superpowering spam. The whole point is to hit the algorithm in some way—to basically win the algorithmic lottery, get people to like, comment, share, and hopefully, go very viral.”
But Garilao himself sees things differently. For him, making these videos is a creative outlet—and a lucrative one. Speaking with BERITAJA by phone, he explained his process: “When I think of the story or what the dialogue would be, I would just sit there and think of a random one, which I find funny. That’s it.” Using ChatGPT to generate characters, KlingAI to create the animation, and other software for editing, Garilao produces one or two videos a day, each taking one to two hours. He’s not alone in this, but his results are enviable. In May 2025 alone, he earned $9,000 through YouTube’s AdSense program—more than a typical entry-level annual salary in his country.
“The highest I made was in the month of May. I made $9,000 in just one month,” Garilao said. For a college student, that’s a windfall. And it’s not just the money—his subscriber count has ballooned to about 600,000, with nearly 500 million total views as of August 28, 2025. Other channels, seeing the potential, are producing similar AI-generated videos at even higher rates, all hoping to cash in.
How did Garilao supercharge his earnings? In May, he tapped into the “Italian brainrot” meme trend, adding popular AI-generated characters like Ballerina Cappuccina—a dancer with a coffee cup for a head—and Tralalero Tralala, a shark in Nike sneakers, to his videos. The result: more engagement, more views, more revenue.
Not everyone is thrilled. Critics argue these videos clutter feeds with low-effort, repetitive content and are crowding out traditional creators—artists, photographers, and storytellers who don’t rely on AI. “I think that discoverability on the internet has already started to collapse,” Koebler told NPR. “It becomes really hard to stand out when the primary arbiter of whether something is seen or not is an engagement algorithm.”
And it’s not just about quality. Some AI slop videos cross the line into outright misinformation. In July 2025, fake clips circulated online showing celebrities rescuing people from the Texas floods—completely fabricated, but convincing enough to fool some viewers. The ease and speed of AI video production mean that not only can silly cat adventures proliferate, but so can deceptive or harmful content.
Social media platforms are taking notice, but their responses have been cautious. TikTok and Instagram have begun labeling certain AI-generated content. Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, says it allows AI content that meets community standards and gives users tools to customize what they see. TikTok claims to have rules against AI deepfakes, though enforcement is often questioned.
YouTube, owned by Google, has made perhaps the most visible change. On August 28, 2025, the company updated its policies, expanding restrictions from “repetitive” to the broader term “inauthentic” content, targeting mass-produced or spammy videos. “This is to clarify that the policy includes content that’s mass produced or repetitive, which is content viewers often consider spam,” said Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s in-house creator liaison, in a company video. Still, experts like University of Colorado professor Casey Fiesler note the policy doesn’t explicitly target AI-generated content, leaving its real-world impact uncertain.
Paradoxically, while YouTube cracks down on certain types of inauthentic content, it also encourages creators to use AI features—like generating backgrounds or automating parts of the editing process. The platforms’ hesitancy to enforce strict bans may be rooted in their own investments in AI. As Koebler put it, “I think that they think that maybe this stuff is annoying now, but in five years, they imagine a world where most content on the internet is generated by AI, but it’s content that people are going to want to see.”
For Garilao, the attention—positive and negative—comes with the territory. Early on, he was stung by comments accusing him of producing “AI slop.” “At first I was like, ‘Oh, man, why do they hate my content?’” he recalled. Now, he’s learned to embrace it, responding to detractors with a heart emoji and a thank you for their engagement. After all, every comment, even a critical one, helps push his videos further up the algorithmic ladder.
As AI-generated content continues to reshape the digital landscape, the debate over its value, risks, and future is only getting louder. For now, the kittens keep swimming in rainbow goo, the views and dollars keep rolling in, and the platforms—and their users—are left to navigate a new, sometimes bewildering, online world.