According to a report from video creation tools company Kapwing, about 59% of TikTok videos served in a new account’s For You feed are AI slop. That’s about three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube.
The company manually reviewed over 10,000 TikTok videos across 20 categories and conducted a separate Fresh Account test that counted AI-generated content in the first 500 “For You” videos.
How TikTok compares to YouTube
Kapwing ran the same Fresh Account test on YouTube and found that 104 of the first 500 shorts, or 21%, were AI slop. On TikTok, 294 out of 500 “For You” videos reached this threshold.
I reported on Kapwing’s YouTube results and the broader AI slop problem in March. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan had also cited AI slop as a content quality issue for which the company is developing detection systems.
According to the report, TikTok had already marked 1.3 billion videos as AI-generated as of November.
Children’s content has the highest concentration
Of the 2,000 videos Kapwing reviewed in TikTok’s Kids category, 57% were AI slop. This was the highest rate of any category in the analysis.
The day with the highest rate was #cartoonkidswhere 97 out of 100 videos featured were AI generated. Tags like #Cartoons And #babysong both achieved 83% and #forkids was 79%.
Which categories are most affected?
After children, the next highest AI deviation rates were in science and education (35%), health (33%), and history (33%). All three categories are categories in which visual illustrations and voiceover narration make up a majority of the content.
On the other hand, categories emphasizing on-camera presence or physical demonstration had the lowest rates. Fashion came in at 1.3%, music at 1.5% and fitness at 1.6%.
How Kapwing collected the data
The report’s methodology began with a list of 20 popular TikTok categories and at least three of the most popular tags for each. Kapwing’s team then manually reviewed the featured videos on each tag’s page, counted AI slop content versus non-AI slop content, and combined the results by category. This resulted in category-level percentages from a pool of 10,742 videos.
For the new user test, the team created a new TikTok account, scrolled through 500 “For You” videos, and recorded which ones were AI slop. The 59% value comes from this single account test.
The report defines AI slop as videos with obviously AI-generated images, as well as low-quality compilations with clearly AI-generated scripts and voiceovers.
For the sake of transparency, Kapwing is a video editing and creation platform. The company has a commercial interest in measuring the gap between human-generated and AI-generated content.
Why this is important
Brands producing TikTok content are entering a feed where automated content may outweigh human-made videos for new users. Concentration is higher, especially with content for children.
TikTok has added user controls for AI content, but data suggests what new users see by default is still heavily skewed toward AI-generated videos.
Looking ahead
Kapwing has now released AI Slop Reports for both YouTube and TikTok.
YouTube has responded to its slop problem with detection systems and changes to monetization policies. TikTok has added user-centric controls. Whether these interventions change the actual vision of new users has not been measured.
Featured image: FotoField/Shutterstock
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