AI Slop is ruining Reddit for everyone
A Reddit post A bride who asks a wedding guest to wear a certain, off-putting shade is sure to draw ire, let alone a bridesmaid or mother of the groom who wants to wear white. A scenario where a parent asks someone on an airplane to switch seats so they can sit next to their young child is likely to elicit the same angry rush. But these posts may offend a Reddit moderator for a different reason — they’re common themes in the growing genre of fake, AI-generated posts.
These are the examples that come to mind for Cassie, one of r/AmItheAsshole’s dozens of moderators. With over 24 million members, it is one of the largest sub-services and expressly prohibits AI-generated content and other fictitious stories. Since late 2022, when ChatGPT first became available to the public, Cassie (who asked to be referred to by her first name only) and other people who volunteer their time to moderate Reddit posts have been dealing with an onslaught of AI content. Some are entirely AI-generated, while other users edit their posts and comments with AI apps like Grammarly.
“It’s probably more common than anyone really wants to admit, because it’s so easy to put your post on ChatGPT and say, ‘Hey, make it more exciting,'” says Cassie, who thinks half of the content posted on Reddit may be AI-generated or reworked in some way.
r/AmItheAsshole is a pillar of Reddit culture, a format that has inspired dozens if not hundreds of spin-offs such as r/AmIOverreacting, r/AmITheDevil, and r/AmItheKameena, a subreddit with over 100,000 members that has been described as “I’m the Indian version, but I’m the Indian version.” The posts typically feature stories about interpersonal conflicts, where Redditors can argue about who’s wrong (“YTA” stands for “You’re an idiot,” while “ESH” stands for “Everybody Hurts Here”), who’s right, and what the best course of action is to move on from. Users and moderators on r/AmItheAsshole have reported seeing more content that they believe is AI-generated, and others say it’s a site-wide problem happening in a variety of subreddits.
“If you have a general wedding subreddit or AITA, relationships or anything like that, you’re going to get hit hard,” says one moderator of r/AITAH, a variant of r/AmItheAsshole that has roughly 7 million members. The moderator, a retiree who spoke on condition of anonymity, has been active on Reddit for 18 years — most of it — and also had decades of experience in the web business before that. He sees AI as a potential existential threat to the platform.
“Reddit itself has to do something, or it’s going to eat its own tail,” he says. “It’s getting to the point where AI feeds AI.”
