🪣 AI slop didn’t start with AI. | Antony Kelly

🪣 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝗽 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜. I love the term “AI slop.” Now widely used derogatorily by engineers defending an invented battle against AI — one that should accelerate them if they were real engineers not coders, not threaten them.

But let’s be honest.

👉 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝗽 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜.

👉 It started with engineers — long before AI.

🧱 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝗽 has been the norm for years. Otherwise we wouldn’t need quality gates, safety nets, code reviews, static analysis, PRs and checklists, and entire process layers to stop slop escaping.

As an industry, we’ve accepted that slop goes in from engineers, and built slow, complex processes to contain it. It's now just easier and more convient to call out AI than the engineer next to you.

Now AI enters.

An engineer throws in a vague prompt — one that would never be acceptable if handed to another engineer setting an impossible bar.

🤖 AI fills the gaps.

📄 Generates something.

🗑️ It’s called “AI slop”.

And then the engineer responsible says > “See? Just AI slop it can’t code”

But let’s be clear:

❗ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝗽 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜.

❗ 𝗜𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿.

AI is just a mirror of the skill and effort of the engineer at the helm who's responsible for the quality of the output.

Lets be frank, many engineers don’t actually engineer, they just code.

They make something that works. The next engineer calls the code slop. More engineers are paid to fix it, often with “let’s rewrite the code.” and more slop in the eyes of the next engineer. Code is subjective, the goals and engineering requirments aren't which should be the focus.

So the real question isn’t “Can AI code?” it's 🔥 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 — 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴?

Some uncomfortable questions:

1️⃣ 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 How much engineering is taught — and how much is just coding?

2️⃣ 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 & 𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀 How much are they taught to think like engineers, mentored effectivity versus being told to “just ship code”? Learning by bad code examples rather than principles.

3️⃣ 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀 How many are engineers — not just coders being doing it too long so get a title?

If that number were small why would constant rewrite desires dominate our industry. The reason is just subjective views of code.

Those systems weren’t built by AI they were built by senior engineers manually and later called slop.

👨‍💻 𝗔 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 says: > “That’s not the code I wanted.” Will rework for no real business value or objective need.

🧠 𝗔𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 says: > “Code is good enough and a means to an end.” Pragmatically delivering value.

Engineers build systems. Code is just a building block.

🚀 𝗔𝗜 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀. It exposes who never was one.

👇 Fell free to argue in the comments, especially if you are one of the "AI slop" commentors

😁 | 146 comments on LinkedIn