Why does AI want to be cool?
If it isn’t clear enough, artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over our lives. Workplaces practically mandate AI usage, Google searches automatically contain AI overviews, and every other photo you see on your feed is likely AI-generated. There’s been a solid amount of pushback against this AI takeover, with people shaming chronic AI users and calling anything “AI slop.”
And while it was initially possible to avoid AI outside work or the professional lens, AI is now ever-present in hobbies and indulgences that we once used as an escape.
Encroaching into entertainment
K-pop fans, for example, used to look forward to dance challenges, music videos, and concept photos. Nowadays though, they’re dreading the inevitable sighting of AI-generated anything in media they once cherished. You’ll quickly find an AI artist listed in a credits roll or get jumpscared by a hyper-realistic, Gemini-generated image of a fan making lovey-dovey poses with their favorite idol.
Filipino entertainment is not exempt from this: A primetime teleserye was recently exposed for using generative AI in one of its scenes, and this is not the first time the network was caught red-handed. Fandoms are also grappling with AI problems of their own, as more fanworks are produced with or assisted by various AI tools.
Artificial swag
Top AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic—the ones behind ChatGPT and Claude respectively—are showing up in Super Bowl ads and hosting influencer dinners. There’s a conscious effort to make AI look and sound cool.
Though one can’t help but wonder: Why try to make AI happen in spaces composed of people who despise it?
Apparently, it’s no longer enough for AI to position itself as a mere convenience. Years of being associated with bad writing and academic dishonesty, as well as the constant need to innovate, urged Big Tech to make AI smarter. That’s why vibe coding and automation engineering are among some of the most lucrative fields as of late.
Gone are the days when AI is only associated with copy-pasted emails and essays, as it quite literally pays to advance in dealing with this form of technology. But of course, nothing stops there.
One of the last things that cannot be fully automated would arguably be the possession of taste. Having good taste takes time and money—primarily because of how taste is built from intentional education, experience, and consumption. Thus, taste is heavily associated with intelligence, and because AI depends on getting smarter, it also has to develop a sense of taste, which is ironic.
There are no shortcuts to taste, but AI is intent on making some.
Tasteslop
The result is often called “tasteslop,” which is essentially what happens when art, media, and pop culture are stripped of their meaning and ultimately reduced to their optics, as per cultural strategist and writer Emily Segal. Tasteslop is what we get when we want something nice to look at ASAP, even if it comes at the expense of the time and effort that make something considered good taste.
When we simultaneously value aesthetics and instant gratification, we get tasteslop. This occurs when people ask ChatGPT to doodle on and annotate their images, or when AI companies invest in experiential marketing through in-person events that simply look cool.
Tasteslop is yet another manifestation of our reliance on trends to shape our preferences. The aforementioned tendency has existed long before, but it is being further amplified by the rise of AI. If consumerism told us we had to buy into something to shape our identities, AI tells us we can simply generate it.
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital reminds us that taste is formed through lived experiences, often unlocked by what our social status and mobility can afford. Good taste is a key indicator of a high level of cultural capital, which many naturally crave.
Technological advancements in AI attempt to democratize this by letting agents develop and determine taste, but it’s far too easy for real taste to get lost in the sauce. Segal’s musings on tasteslop highlight that good taste is built on idiosyncrasy—the human uniqueness that AI constantly tries (and fails) to convey and replicate.
“The biggest thing people are missing about taste is that it is relative, contextual, and social. Taste needs to be socially validated. There is no such thing as taste if it falls in a forest,” says the cultural strategist.
Keeping humans in the loop
Amid multiple variants of AI discourse, something people understandably misunderstand is that AI is bound to replace them. As cliché and tech bro-adjacent as it may sound, it won’t.
A common buzz phrase among those using and building with AI these days would be “human in the loop,” where people are essential to the advancement of AI by actively participating in its improvement. So in that sense, AI can only be as smart as an actual smart person. And human intelligence can still be cultivated in a world of slop, just as long as a person chooses to exist beyond it.
But at this point in time, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be completely rid of AI if you’re anyone who does anything online.
Rather than pushing for vehement rejection that’s often easier dreamed of than done, neutrality and compartmentalization are values worth considering when dealing with artificial intelligence. There are ways to coexist with AI in a way that reminds you that technology can also take after you—instead of you simply growing reliant on it.
As AI continues taking over our lives and attempting to prove that it can possess taste or seem cool, the best way to fight back is to be in pursuit of your own cool, with or without it.
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