On “normal” social media platforms:
- AI-generated videos of UK royalty dancing with their royal children.
- Crotch shots of AI-generated female athletes with definition in the crotch area that would get them disqualified from whatever AI-generated event they were going to compete in.
- AI-generated dogs saving the lives of AI-generated babies.
- AI-generated aircraft crashing onto the decks of AI-generated aircraft carriers.
- AI-generated animals having AI-generated foreign objects removed from their skin by AI-generated veterinarians, and many more, even more-revolting fake videos involving animals.
- A constant stream of AI text slop from places like India, Macedonia, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Vietnam, mostly accompanied by unlawfully published photos, the poster neither giving credit for the images nor citing sources, and certainly not having permission to use the images.
- A constant stream of ads—mostly confirmable as coming from Vietnam—for WiFi connection equipment and services in Japan, clearly aimed at Asian laborers who have been brokered into Japan to work.
- AI-generated voices of well-known people on a video of two seconds of the person to establish “authenticity” and continuing for several minutes with the faked voice but without any image, because the lip movement would give it away instantly. There are countless fake Neil deGrasse Tyson videos like this. The voice is very close, but the cadence of the fake narration clearly is not his. This theft is a crime that will go unpunished, thanks to the guaranteed anonymity of social media and apathy of users, many of whom have been numbed to this behavior by a torrent of unlawful posts.
- Inspirational stories that never happened, mostly from places like Macedonia
- Ads claiming to sell you the method of getting rich quickly using ChatGPT. One testimonial boasts of being able to buy a luxury car and a home after just two months of stock market investment.
- Ads for underground banks aimed at Asian laborers in Japan who want to repatriate money they earn in Japan.
On some platforms, video slop you didn’t ask for and don’t need will autoplay after you watch something that you have actually elected to watch, requiring you to escape to avoid seeing it.
From the LinkedIn social media platform in particular—and it is as social media platform:
- Vapid AI slop posts with both text and graphics generated AI, the subject matter of which most often being totally unrelated to what the poster purports to do when they are not generating AI slop.
- AI-smelling text posts that evoke many comments, with each comment being replied to by AI, the replies being within a word or two of each other in length.
- Microsoft-suggested posts promoting AI or promoting AI promoters.
- Ads promoting AI.
- Posts from soon-to-be-out-of-work translators claiming that AI will not replace human translators.
- Unwanted irrelevant connection requests, mostly from the Global South (although I have fixed that problem).
- Ads for paid webinars run or promoted by translation organizations to teach translators how to succeed and be better at jobs that are quickly disappearing.
- Translators’ organizations announcing activities of little or no relevance to translators working in the high-demand mainstream domains that are rapidly shrinking because of AI-using agencies.
- Constant non-productive and futile complaints from freelance translators about this or that agency, this preaching to the choir constituting a waste of attention and time that could be better spent thinking about what to do next (hint: for most, it’s not freelance translating or probably translating at all).
- Investment scam ads (including investment in mango plantations).
- Ads for homes in Dubai for USD 1 million.
There you have it. Who could ask for anything more? More importantly, who asked for any of this?