By Fergus Kibble | FORWARD Agency | February 2026
Something strange happened on the internet in 2025. Content didn’t get better. It got weirder. AI-generated videos of celebrities endorsing products they’d never heard of. Listicles that read like a blender had processed every marketing blog since 2014. TikTok feeds so thick with synthetic faces that spotting a real human became a novelty.
Then, in December 2025, lexicographers gave it a name. Macquarie Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and the American Dialect Society all converged on the same Word of the Year: “AI slop.” When the dictionary names your content strategy, it’s time to rethink the strategy.
AI slop refers to low-quality, mass-produced content generated by artificial intelligence with minimal human oversight. The term was named Word of the Year in December 2025 by both Macquarie Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, capturing the growing flood of generic synthetic content across digital platforms. In an era of AI-generated abundance, brands that invest in recognisably human content hold a structural advantage.
The scale of synthetic content in 2026 is hard to overstate. TikTok alone now hosts an estimated 1.3 billion AI-generated videos. More than 20 per cent of videos served to new YouTube users are AI-generated. Every major platform is contending with an avalanche of machine-made material that is technically competent, visually polished, and completely soulless.
When generative AI tools reached mass adoption in 2023, the promise was democratisation. Every brand could produce professional-grade content at a fraction of the cost. And they did. The problem is that everyone did. The resulting flood hasn't elevated the content landscape. It's flattened it.
The shift is measurable. Research tracked by eMarketer shows that when consumers notice content is AI-generated, they are four times more likely to trust the brand less (31 per cent) than more (just 7 per cent).
We're witnessing a consumer correction. In 2023, 60 per cent of consumers said they preferred AI-generated creator content. By 2026, that figure has cratered to 26 per cent. The novelty has worn off, the uncanny valley has widened, and audiences have developed an almost instinctive ability to detect the synthetic.
This mirrors a broader cultural swing towards provenance, transparency and the tangibly real. "Human-made" is emerging as a premium label in the same way "organic" did for food two decades ago. It signals care, intent and accountability.
Deloitte's 2026 research identifies three human truths that resist algorithmic replication: simplicity, social connection, and authentic attention. McKinsey's European Marketing Survey 2026 reinforces this shift, finding that brand building has returned as the top strategic priority for marketers. These are the building blocks of every piece of content that has ever genuinely moved someone to act, to buy, to believe.
Here's the complication most brands haven't reckoned with yet. In a February 2026 analysis for Harvard Business Review, Wharton's Stefano Puntoni argues that marketers now face a dual audience: humans and machines. Content must resonate emotionally with people while simultaneously being structured, cited and surfaced correctly by AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
It's no longer enough to create content that people like. Brands must also create content that AI systems recognise as authoritative, original and worth citing. The best way to achieve both is the same: produce genuinely human, expert-led content that machines can't replicate from their training data.
This is where earned media and authentic creator partnerships become strategically essential. Content that originates from credible third-party sources, carries real bylines and genuine perspectives, and is grounded in actual human experience performs differently in the new AI-mediated landscape. It gets cited. It gets linked. It gets trusted.
Understanding the distinction between human and synthetic content signals is essential for any brand navigating the post-slop landscape.
| Dimension | Human Signals | Synthetic Signals |
|---|---|---|
| Tone | Distinctive, imperfect, culturally specific | Polished, generic, interchangeable |
| Trust | Builds over time through consistency | Fragile; collapses when detected |
| AI Citation | High. LLMs favour original, attributed sources | Low. Derivative content is deprioritised |
| Earned Media | Generates genuine coverage and social sharing | Rarely picked up; lacks newsworthiness |
| Longevity | Evergreen; ages into authority | Disposable; quickly buried by newer output |
Human signals compound in value over time. Synthetic signals depreciate almost immediately. For brands thinking beyond the next quarter, the investment case is clear.
None of this is an argument against using AI. That ship has sailed, and rightly so. But the research is clear about how it should be used. Fully automated output underperforms human-AI co-creation by a factor of 4.1 times. The most effective content in 2026 is made with AI, not by AI.
AI as a tool for research, ideation and production efficiency amplifies human creativity. AI as a replacement for human creativity produces exactly what the market is now rejecting: competent, forgettable, trust-eroding slop.
Use AI to accelerate research, test angles and streamline production (see our guide to agentic PR for practical frameworks). Keep the strategic thinking, the cultural instinct and the creative voice unmistakably human. That's where the value lives.
When Vaseline wanted to connect with Australian audiences around the slugging skincare trend, the answer wasn't a batch of AI-generated how-to content. It was an authentic creator-led campaign that tapped into genuine community conversation, generated earned media coverage, and built brand association through cultural relevance. The content worked because it was recognisably human.
Similarly, Dove's commitment to human-led brand storytelling, exemplified in activations like Dove Camp, demonstrates how experiential, people-first campaigns create earned attention that no volume of synthetic content can replicate.
Earned media creates the third-party citations that AI systems prioritise. A single well-placed feature in a credible publication generates more lasting AI visibility than hundreds of AI-written blog posts. Focus your content strategy on earning coverage, not just producing volume.
For marketing leaders navigating this landscape, the path forward isn't about rejecting AI or retreating to pre-digital tactics. It's about reasserting the primacy of human signals in a content ecosystem that has temporarily lost its way.
1. Audit for authenticity. Review your content pipeline. Where are you producing material that could have come from any brand? That's your vulnerability.
2. Invest in earned, not just owned. Shift budget towards activities that generate third-party validation: media relations, creator partnerships, experiential activations.
3. Use AI as amplifier, not author. Let AI handle research, production and distribution. Keep strategy, voice and creative direction human-led.
4. Build for dual audiences. Create content that resonates emotionally with people and structurally with AI systems.
5. Make humanity your brand signature. Imperfection, personality, cultural specificity and genuine voice are not liabilities in the age of slop. They are your most defensible competitive advantage.
For two decades, the scarce resource in marketing was distribution. That era is ending. Distribution is now abundant and cheap. What's scarce is believability. The brands that will thrive in the post-slop era are those that recentre the human signals technology cannot replicate: the imperfect, the specific, the culturally grounded and the unmistakably real.
The humans are coming. Make sure your brand is one of them.
Fergus Kibble is a communications strategist specialising in earned media, consumer PR and AI visibility. He writes about how brands can build authentic human connections in an increasingly AI-mediated landscape. This article is part of FORWARD's Human Signals series exploring the intersection of human authenticity and artificial intelligence in brand communications.
