- One in five videos recommended to new YouTube accounts is now AI-generated junk, according to Kapwing research on 15,000 channels.
- The top 278 "slop" channels are pulling in an estimated $117 million a year while racking up 63 billion views.
- The problem isn't spread evenly. Spain leads the world with over 20 million subscribers to these channels—that is nearly half the country's population.
Open a fresh YouTube account today, and there's a one-in-five chance the platform will serve you what the internet has learned to call AI slop, which means low-quality, AI-generated videos designed purely to farm views and ad revenue.
That's not a glitch. It's the system doing exactly what it was told to do. Research from video editing platform Kapwing, published in November 2025, examined 15,000 of YouTube’s most popular channels and found 278 that produce nothing but AI-generated content. Together, those channels have amassed 63 billion views and an estimated $117 million in annual revenue.
When researchers created a brand-new account to see what a fresh user actually experiences, 104 of the first 500 videos recommended were AI-generated. Roughly a third fell into what the internet calls brainrot, content that teaches you nothing and entertains you even less, but somehow keeps you watching.
This creates a massive first-impression problem. For the next billion people coming online, most of them in emerging markets, YouTube will not feel like a place to discover human creativity. It'll likely feel like a feed of noise that was never touched by a human hand.
MORE INSIGHTS ON THIS TOPIC:
- YouTube lets U.S. creators get paid in PYUSD as stablecoins enter mainstream payouts
- YouTube is testing a custom feed that could finally fix your chaotic homepage
- Is YouTube Becoming Nollywood’s Real Box Office?
