Slop Is Slop

Tim Cook dropped a festive promo pic for Apple TV’s Pluribus, and the internet promptly grabbed popcorn. The credited artist, Keith Thomson, told reporters he “always draws by hand and sometimes incorporates standard digital tools,” which many read as a slippery non-answer on whether generative AI was involved. Cue the flame war. On one side: the AI-is-always-slop crowd led by llmslave2, who declared that machine-made art can’t even be “good,” full stop. On the other: defenders like LarsAlereon, who argue the image is a deliberate commentary on AI and the show’s themes, and dismissing it for “looking AI” misses the point. Meanwhile, MG Siegler floated a mind-bendy theory about art trained on the artist’s own art—meta!—but skeptics shouted “no 3D chess,” calling it just plain ugly. The comments got spicy: ares623 warned the artist risked their reputation feeding “AI psychosis,” blell snarked that the subtext implies humans can’t make bad art, and amelius turned it into a meme with “1000 TSlop/s,” measuring GPUs in pure slop. The bigger drama? Whether Apple got duped into posting AI-looking “turd” art or intentionally leaned into the discourse. Occam’s razor (the idea that the simplest explanation is usually right) got name-checked, and so did Slashdot, PiunikaWeb, and MG’s posts. Verdict from the crowd: holiday cheer meets AI fear, with slop front and center.