Are we becoming too paranoid about AI slop?

Recently a person I'm following on Mastodon posted a picture of two cats. It was cute and kind of funny. I saw it, chuckled and forgot about it. But then someone replied that they ran the picture through an AI checker and according to this the picture was very likely AI generated. So the original poster apologised for not checking whether or not the picture was AI generated slop and to make up for their blunder, posted a different cat picture that wasn't AI generated (hopefully). A similar thing happened with the announcement of Blaugust a few days ago. The official policy permits using AI generated images for blog posts, and some people were very vocal (read: angry and borderline abusive) about their disagreement with this decision. And now I'm sitting here, after reading these interactions, and I'm wondering, are we maybe becoming a little too paranoid about AI generated content? Do we now have the obligation to check each and every picture, video, quote, text, post, etc. that we come across for whether it's human or AI generated? Do we have to apologise profusely if something slips through and we accidentally share slop? Do we have to police each other and check other people's posts and point out to them (with proof!) that they posted or shared or quoted slop? Is this the 2026 version of having fun on the internet? I don't know. I don't like slop either, and I steer clear of channels, profiles, accounts etc. that consistently spit it out into the world, and I'm also not going to repost anything that I think falls into this category. And I reserve the right to make fun of companies that try to position themselves as a better alternative to all the modern nonsense, then happily use AI generated images and videos all over their marketing material. But... I also don't want to live in a world where I have to double and triple check every single damn thing I come across before I share it or quote it or even just be amused by it, and where, should I fail to do so, someone will come along and yell at me because I *gasp* shared slop!! That doesn't sound like fun to me. There's not really a conclusion or a moral to this story. Just a few thoughts that have been running through my head. You might disagree, and that's fine. Replies: Joel's reply. Noisy Deadlines' reply. Hyde's reply. Thomas' reply. If you would like to send me a message, comment or share this post, you can do so here: Send me an E-Mail | Reply on Mastodon | Share on Mastodon