The rise of AI slop and synthetic content. Exploring how India might become the ground zero for the next generation of hyper-personalised, addictive content consumption.
Whenever social media gets too annoying or loses relevance for me, I tend to stop using it. I have heavily regulated the time I spent there, of course not by deleting, but by uninstalling. I’d reinstall just to check, scroll through for a few moments and then uninstall it from my phone. It isn’t exactly a happy relationship, but it is functional.
Then the AI slop arrived.
You’ve probably seen it too. The disaster footage with that explainer influencer is backlit by a slight glow that doesn’t quite match the lighting in the room. Yesterday, it was obvious. Today, it’s subtle. Tomorrow, it’ll be indistinguishable.
In a way, this is also almost exactly what’s happening on Linkedin. It’s still pretty easy to identify stilted, AI-written text. Just like on Instagram, I’m pretty sure that these signs will disappear. I’ll have to read an entire post before finally realising it’s shallow, which will mean it was probably written by AI.
I’m convinced that India will be at the forefront of discovering how this plays out across society. It will probably be the ground zero to experience the worst effects of AI, particularly synthetic content consumption at mass scale.
There are several reasons why I’m betting that India will be the first place. It’s already the world’s largest market by users for both the social-media platforms and the AI platforms. Also, there’s little friction for future AI adoption in India — especially since most users already have access to premium, high-performance versions of tools such as Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT at no cost.
Some are optimistic about this. They argue that India will create a generation of AI-fluent individuals who can build innovative applications. I’m sure some of that may happen, but it’s pretty obvious that the vast majority of Indians will become consumers of AI, not creators.
That future sounds far less appealing.
India is already among the world’s top markets in terms of users of internet and social media. Already, there’s a generation of people, young and old, addicted to their phones. You see them in the metro, on flights, in traffic, and at home — mindlessly scrolling through a sea of infinite content. Multiply that infinity by another infinity, and it’s apparent that AI will create more addictive, hyper-personalised content delivered by algorithms. There will be no way to tell what’s real and what’s synthetic.
What happens at that point?
I’m not certain, but I predict this could trigger a reversal, with many elite and privileged individuals starting to abandon social media, at least in its current form. This is already happening, but I expect this to accelerate. They’ll end up adopting non-AI, closed community spaces. Since there must be a barrier to prevent synthetic content to seep in, these will probably be subscription products. Essentially, it’s premiumisation, but from another dimension, i.e. pay to keep the AI slop out.
And this will work. At first, anyway.
Given the lopsided nature of India’s pyramid, there will always be a small paying segment that everyone wants to target. The incentives for AI to break through that barrier will be enormous and all it takes is for a few people inside the circle to start using again AI because they’ll think it gives them an edge either in terms of quality or quantity.
Soon after that, everyone will be using it, and the system will once again be polluted.