AI slop now defines TikTok’s first‑time user experience

A new Kapwing study analyzing 10,742 TikTok videos across 20 categories found that 59% of videos shown to brand‑new TikTok accounts are AI‑generated “slop” — low‑quality, synthetic videos with obvious AI visuals, distorted animations, or AI‑written scripts and voiceovers. This is three times the rate found on YouTube Shorts, making TikTok’s default experience overwhelmingly machine‑generated before personalization kicks in. Children’s content is hit hardest: 57% of Kids‑category videos were AI slop, and in hashtags like #CartoonKids, 97 out of 100 videos were AI‑generated. Educational categories — science, health, history — also showed high saturation, raising concerns about misinformation. TikTok has introduced controls to reduce AI content, but Kapwing’s data suggests they have little effect on new‑user feeds. The findings arrive amid growing legal pressure on TikTok over children’s safety and highlight a broader trend: AI‑generated junk is flooding major platforms because it is cheap, fast, and algorithm‑friendly.

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