← Back to context

Comment by chrisjj

2 months ago

The section What is considered “Slop"? conspiciously fails to answer this question. It simply describes the recognition of material as "AI-generated".

From SlopStop is Kagi’s community-driven feature for reporting low-quality, mass‑generated AI content (“AI slop”) found in web, image and video search results. one might conclude slop is low-quality, mass‑generated content, but why limit opposition to the subset that's from "AI"?

> If the page is AI‑generated but the domain is mixed (not mostly AI), we flag the page as AI‑generated but do not downrank it.

> If a domain is found to be mostly AI‑generated (typically more than 80% across its pages), that domain is flagged as AI slop and downranked in web search results.

I think that's pretty clear, no? One AI item is merely AI generated, a trough of AI items is AI slop.

Edited as I think I misunderstood: there's more slop of the AI kind than of whatever other low-effort content, and I think Kagi is already doing a good job of keeping a neat little index that avoids content farms, AI or otherwise. AI slop just happens to be a little harder to evaluate than regular slop (and in my experience is now more pervasive because it's cheaper to produce).

> It simply describes the recognition of material as "AI-generated".

That works as a good definition for me. Whether or not you want to call it "slop", anything that helps to filter out AI-generated stuff could be helpful.

My only concern about this is that it seems to rely on user reporting, and if that reporting includes (mistakenly or otherwise) sites that don't have AI generated content, that could make the tool less useful.

  • Further info here https://blog.kagi.com/slopstop indicates a key attribute is "deceptive".

    I can see this being weaponised against controversial sites made by humans, with no way to prove they are human.

    • Reports being weaponised is a big issue with asymmetric (report-only) systems, but at least here there seems to be a “report as not slop” button.

      “Symmetric” user reporting is dearly needed in some websites; as you say something can be mass-reported with no real recourse.