I’ve commented about this before, but I do actually miss those first few generations of image generators. The first DeepDream style stuff was interesting but didn’t go very far, but this image in particular is a milestone for what came directly after.
I would love to run VQGAN+CLIP locally, for example, in some efficient way. It was fun to play with and to see how the model interpreted the input. And it wasn’t as scary as the tools we have now (especially when those are paired with the deep fake face swap stuff, for example)
I genuinely think slop is the perfect word for the current iteration of these image generators, both the image outputs themselves and the role they’re playing in the already-bleak digital media landscape.
This is the first time I realize that this famous image was not "designed" to simulate what a stroke feels like visually, it was just serendipity. They were probably just really trying to generate an image of a living room, but the AI image generators were still in its infancy.
Watching in real time as “slop” becomes a term of art. the way that “spam” became the term for unwanted emails, “slop” is going in the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI generated content
Not even the internet specifically, but often media in general. It comes from the use of "slop" as the mix of garbage that you pour into a feeding trough for pigs. Basically junk that companies think people will gobble up regardless of the quality.
just a general word for mediocre images that are taking up space over better stuff. Like AI images being the first result for 'frog' or something would be considered AI slop
Me being drunk and Jerboa not allowing me to keep the op and my question in sight while responding limit my ability to ask my next question. I have deleted and tried typing that question too many times.
One of my favorite obsolete usages is slop for a jacket or outerwear, derived from middle English but kept alive in the nautical vernacular for some time after.