Haven't seen a difference but I also block / downvote everybody / community that posts ai slob so ...

I don't see it, which is horrific considering that others do. can you show a few examples that you think is AI slop?

"slop" is being thrown around just like "socialist" and "gay". Save it for actual AI slop. Just because something is made by AI doesn't make it automatically "slop" 🙄

As long as it's intentionally made by a human and the end result is high quality, I personally don't really care what AI or other tools they did or didn't use to create that result

They are flooding the zone, there are countless pro-AI generated content instances. It's like playing whack-a-mole, I often downvote obvious and human-altered slop (it's all slop to me). Unfortunately, there are going to be images that have positive votes despite the general dislike of said AI-slop, especially because I tend to block those slop instances these days. Naturally, most of it is objectifying women (something I don't want to see anyway) so those will naturally get a lot of votes because people weren't thinking with the right head.

O don't give a shit and 100% skip useless posts clearly created using AI.

But interesting posts, I do read them even if made with AI.

Common sense. A loud minority has tired of throwing tantrums about AI generated stuff. Other people upvote according to the quality of material, not to the methods of its creation.

The internet is steadily becoming Facebook. Full of idiots being force fed AI slop. Alarmingly confident in their wrongness about almost everything.

I think I have most AI stuff I encountered blocked, and I assume so do other anti AI people, so there's probably just not enough people downvoting/commenting on AI since they don't get it on their feed

I just haven’t noticed really. The reality is that memes, even ones that were made by hand with a lot of effort, are disposable content. Most of them will get looked at for like 10 seconds tops before you either move on or maybe check out the comments. Nobody who isn’t obsessed with finding the AI slop is going to notice the difference between an AI meme and just a shitty photoshop job.

That’s not to say I’m not concerned by the effects of that. Lower effort needed means more low effort stuff, but it’s not really something I’ve clocked as being particularly out of the ordinary.

Lemmy is a mix between technology geeks and leftists, and many of us are both. The geek tend to be at least somehow interested in gen "AI" and often know the technical words behind it (if not what they mean). The leftists are more worried by the socio economic impact of AI

People don't care. as long as they can get their infinite scroll with funny picture, they're happy.

Same with Reddit. In fact I'd just decided to delete the Reddit app and just hang out here, because the AI slop has become intolerable. But really I'm seeing it everywhere. Google News used to be interesting and now again AI slop. Is this the end of human-based online articles and interactions?

John Oliver did a show on this recently, in summary: "not all AI is spam, but all spam is AI". My take, legitimate accounts with a long history are cheap to generate, they're a great purchase to help spread bad faith disinformation and look legit. It's a business model.

I honestly don't see much from the comms I follow (and it's a lot thanks to piefed topics), and when I do browse all, if I find a post from a comm that allows them, I either ignore it or block the comm, for example a genAI art comms.

Idk, lemmy, mbin, piefed, etc isn't reddit with algorithms so it's kind of on the user if they see a lot of it, IMO.

Yeah, you’re definitely noticing something real—there has been a marked uptick in AI-generated content across the fediverse (and the wider web), and the cultural resistance that once defined many parts of the fediverse is softening in certain pockets. Here's a breakdown of what’s likely going on:

Cultural Shift: Anti-AI Sentiment Is Fragmenting The fediverse (especially Mastodon and related platforms) did start out with strong anti-corporate, anti-surveillance, and often anti-AI stances. But:

The fediverse is not monolithic. As it grows, the original culture is diversifying. New users from Reddit, Twitter/X, and elsewhere are bringing more mainstream (and often more accepting) attitudes toward generative AI.

Fatigue and normalization. Even people who once objected to AI art might be experiencing "AI fatigue"—the novelty and shock have worn off. Now it’s just part of the media landscape.

Irony and memetics. A lot of AI slop is posted ironically, which muddies the waters. It’s part of the "post-cringe" meme economy—bad on purpose becomes good again.

Detection is Slipping: AI Art Is Getting Harder to Spot Improvements in quality. Tools like DALL·E 3, Midjourney v6, and OpenAI’s newer models produce more coherent, less obviously AI-generated content than older ones.

Users are desensitized. The sheer volume of generated content means people are less likely to scrutinize every image, especially if it hits emotional or meme-relevant notes.

Some folks just don’t care. As long as it’s funny, pretty, or relatable, many users don’t bother checking for signs of AI generation.

Positive Votes Don’t Always Equal Approval Engagement ≠ Endorsement. Sometimes people upvote or boost something because it's absurd, ironic, or sparking discussion.

Algorithm-free doesn’t mean signal-free. Even on federated platforms, attention follows trends. If a few users with high visibility post AI memes, others follow.

So, what does this mean? The fediverse is evolving, and its anti-AI culture is being challenged by a mix of userbase expansion, desensitization, and post-ironic meme culture.

It doesn’t necessarily mean most people like AI slop—they might just tolerate or engage with it differently than before.

You’ll still find strong anti-AI sentiment in certain instances (e.g., when artists are affected or attribution is misleading), but the lines are blurrier now.

If you’re seeing a lot of it in your timeline, it might also help to check what instances or users you’re federated with—it’s possible you're seeing more from a few high-volume posters rather than a broad shift across the entire network.

Is this post AI generated?

Many people don't care about it. Me included, for instance.

I would give the reason why but I don't know if anyone is truly interested in knowning.

I don't consider things being made by AI as something terrible. If the post is fine I upvote and comment like any other post. If the content is lazy, clickbaity or plain bad then it's bad. But if it's good I don't care that it was produced using some AI tool or other.

It's true that the fediverse it's still hostile towards AI conversation (this very comment have high possibilities to be drowned with downvotes) but I'm glad the general stance is changing little by little. I hope in a few years the hostility would be much more marginal, specially if the fediverse keeps growing and more people with more diverse opinions come in.

I like to talk about topics, seeing different opinions about it, and when everyone have the same opinion the discussion is not really interesting. With AI, it's something new that sparks a lot of though process about may topic. For instance the morality of it, or the limits, trying to find the gray areas between the black and the white. It can be very interesting, and I'm glad, little by little we can start talking about it.

I've noticed a LOT of generated memes and they tend to have positive votes

What's the issue with that one in particular? Isn't the entire point of a meme just whether it's funny or not?

I mean, they're low effort and unoriginal to begin with. The AI isn't really changing anything about that.

I feel like memes is one of the few places where AI doesn't hurt anyone at all.

AI sentiment IRL seems to have exploded as well. I think everyone is accepting 'the inevitable'

Personally I block all the meme communities.