Report: Nearly 60% of videos recommended to new TikTok accounts are AI slop

YouTube has taken some steps to reduce the volume of AI slop on its platform, but for AI skeptics, TikTok‘s For You Page leaves a lot to be desired. A new report from Kapwing found that new TikTok accounts receive a high volume of AI-generated recommendations. As Kapwing puts it: “TikTok has a slop problem.”

To conduct its study, Kapwing built a list of popular categories and manually analyzed tags within those categories. Any AI slop videos with those tags were noted. Then, Kapwing registered new TikTok accounts and recorded the number of slop videos served on the For You Page.

The results were troubling. 59% of the TikToks served to the new accounts were categorized as AI slop, and the frequency of those recommendations appeared to increase deeper into the For You Page. In certain categories, AI slop proved inescapable. For the tag #CartoonKids, a whopping 97% of videos were categorized as AI slop. For kids’ videos in general, 57% of the studied videos qualified as AI slop.

Given these findings, TikTok is due for admonition from the same child safety watchdogs who went after YouTube and its library of AI slop. Put simply, TikTok has same problematic relationship with AI that YouTube does. It’s hard to argue that you’re cracking down on slop when you also invest heavily in generative AI.

YouTube’s solution has involved crackdowns on slop channels and tools that let users limit their exposure to low-effort, AI-generated content. Kapwing noted that effort in a previous report, and its latest release claims that TikTok accounts get three times as many AI recs as YouTube accounts do.

TikTok, like YouTube, has tried to put power in users’ hands by giving them the option to see less AI content on the For You Page. Kapwing’s report reveals that one effort is probably not going to be enough to stem the slop tide. If TikTok really wants to solve the problem Kapwing describes, more active moderation will be necessary.