The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop

AI slop is often dismissed as the byproduct of generative systems: an excess of synthetic images, text, and video flooding digital networks. But this proliferation reveals a deeper logic. In this lecture, Kate Crawford argues that AI slop is the cultural expression of an extractive metabolism, one that converts planetary resources, human labor, and accumulated knowledge into endlessly reproducible outputs. From mineral extraction and energy-intensive computation to the mass appropriation of human-created data, generative AI operates through cycles of consumption, waste, and recursive reproduction. As synthetic content increasingly becomes the training data for future models, these systems begin consuming their own outputs, intensifying ecological, epistemic, and political crises.

Kate Crawford is an internationally leading scholar of AI. Her award-winning book, Atlas of AI, was named a best book of the year by The Financial Times, won three international prizes, and has been translated into fourteen languages. She is a Professor at USC, and is on the AI advisory boards of multiple national bodies, including the AI Council for President Sanchez of Spain, Beyond her scholarly and policy work, she is an award-winning artist whose work explores the themes of technology, history, and power. Her artworks have been shown in over 100 museums worldwide, including the KW Institute, Jeu de Paume, Fondazione Prada, and Mori Museum, and in the permanent collections of MoMA, the V&A, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, among others. Her latest work with Vladan Joler, Calculating Empires, won the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology, and the Boghossian Art Prize. TIME100 named Crawford as one of the world’s most influential people in AI.