Slop stars: why AI-generated content could help creators

Let's be real. When it comes to your health, authenticity matters. For nearly thirty years, iHerb has quietly built one of the world's leading online wellness destinations, trusted by millions of customers in 180 countries. At iHerb, every product comes from verified top rated brands, stored, handled, and shipped directly from our own climate controlled state of the art facilities. No third party sellers, no shortcuts, just the highest standards of quality and transparency from cart to doorstep. That's why more and more people are turning to iHerb, where wellness and integrity meet. Visit iherb.com. Trusted wellness delivered worldwide. Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, unlocking the power of Thinkorswim, the award winning trading platforms loaded with features that let you dive deeper into the market. Visualize your trades in a new light on Thinkorswim desktop with robust charting and analysis tools, all while you uncover new opportunities with up to the minute market news and insights. Thinkorswim is available on desktop, web, and mobile to meet you where you are. It's built by the trading obsessed to help you trade brilliantly. Learn more at schwab.com/trading. The Economist. Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blore. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Can men and women truly be friends? It's an age old debate. And now the data bods have weighed in, not with the answer, but what it says about societies where those relationships are common or discouraged. And after something of a hiatus, apparently what the young want these days is five gold rings. And no, it is not just the season. After a boom in silver and other glittery things, the metals are turning once again. First up though. AI is the defining technology of our time, and how we empower people to use it will shape our country's future. Real sustainable improvements in quality of life come from scientific and technological progress, and I think we're gonna have a lot more of that. Advances in technology have freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits that we choose. Okay. The genius enters the arena. Calm as ever. Look at the focus on his face. Wait a second. He's running off the top of the cage. He's airborne. Front. Do a kickflip. They said one simply must try the cheese puffs, and I do see why. AI is seen by a lot of people as this miracle technology, but its latest feat seems to be to bring forth videos of things like skateboarding kittens, wrestling grannies, and a cage fighting Albert Einstein. Tom Wainwright is The Economist's media editor. OpenAI recently launched this video creation app called Sora. And since then, everybody's social media feeds have been flooded with these surreal, weird AI generated videos. So the Internet is quickly becoming clogged up with these uncanny AI videos, which some people have pejoratively labeled slop. The …