The Rise Of AI Slopaganda

We used to call it “fake news.”

Now it’s AI slop.
A digital slurry of half-truths, deepfakes and dopamine.
Videos engineered not to inform but to overwhelm the feed (and your emotions).
The more absurd… the better.

This isn’t about what’s true anymore.

It’s about what’s unbelievable enough to trend.
And the US President knows how to play the game.
He’s been posting AI-generated videos and images for months… himself as the Pope… as a fighter pilot (with quite the payload)… as a messiah conquering Canada.
A grid n’ feed of absurdities.
Each one obviously fake… each one engineered to spread by laughs and gasps.

It’s not propaganda in the old sense… it’s post-propaganda… not persuasion, but participation.

It doesn’t need you to believe.
It just needs you to watch… share.
That’s the “magic” of this content (that many call AI slop).
It’s fast… It’s free… It’s fun to some… terrifying to others.
A digital rubber-necking form of content… you just can’t look away.

Even when you know it’s fake… you still engage.

You repost it to mock it… you debate it… you amplify it… you can’t believe it.

Welcome to the “believe nothing” phase.

A moment when the video itself becomes the message… not because it’s real, but because it’s viral.
Some say it’s creativity.
Some say it’s manipulation.
But the truth… if that word even applies anymore… is that this generative AI content seems to have collapsed the line between message and medium.

This technology is enabling a shape-shifting narrative built in real time by machines trained on our attention spans.

It’s not new propaganda… it’s personalized propaganda.
Optimized for outrage or affirmation… whichever keeps you scrolling.
But here’s what’s really been on my mind as this unfolds before our eyes…

The same systems that generate this content also decide what you see next.

The feed is the factory… the algorithm is the author.
The scariest part isn’t that this content is fake or faked… it’s that it works (even when you know it’s from a slop factory).
The more absurd the image… the faster it spreads.
The more grotesque the claim… the deeper it sticks.

AI has amplified and multiplied political speech into digital performance art.

And the audience (that’s us) isn’t just watching…
We’re training it.
Every like… every comment… every repost (especially the angry ones).
It all teaches the system what wins our attention.

We are the propagandists now… the ones we think we’re fighting.

What we share, what we react to, what we dismiss…
It’s all grist for the next generation of synthetic truth.
Hollywood technologists call it “creative freedom.”
Washington strategists call it “communication strategy.”
It’s information warfare… just faster, cheaper and more seductive.

Said another way: innovation and manipulation are now separated by a single prompt.

The medium has mutated.
Truth has liquefied.
And context (the thing that once anchored reality) can now be generated too.
AI propaganda doesn’t need to fool you.
It just needs to make you numb.

The goal isn’t persuasion… it’s participation.

To keep you clicking… to keep you scrolling… to make disbelief feel pointless.
Because once truth feels irrelevant… power has already won.
The machines are learning from us.
From our outrage… our cynicism… our exhaustion.

So what kind of intelligence are we really teaching them to become?

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

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