YouTube Declares War on AI Slop

YouTube is reportedly updating its Terms and Conditions to crack down on the wave of “AI slop” that’s been flooding the platform, hitting harder than crack in the ‘80s.

You know AI slop when you see it. The other day, I was served a video of a gorilla doing man on the street interviews, asking people, “What’s your body count?”

Yes, that sentence is real. Yes, the internet is broken.

But seriously, starting next week, YouTube is expected to update its policies to limit ad revenue on “inauthentic” content. That includes mass produced, repetitive videos, the kind now easily churned out by AI. Think: AI voiceovers reading AI scripts over AI generated B roll. It’s like watching a robot have a stroke.

Some creators were worried that reaction pages (aka people who just slap their face on someone else’s video) would get hit too, but it looks like they’re safe, for now.

Why it matters

YouTube is the second biggest site on the internet. AI has made it easier than ever to generate video content, which can be good. But Google’s always drawn a line when it comes to low quality junk. And AI slop is the junk food of content: cheap, easy, and bad for everyone.

Ads were running on this AI slop, something I doubt advertisers were thrilled about. And now, we get the obvious result: YouTube pulls the plug on monetization.

This move kills the financial incentive for creators pumping out low effort AI content. In theory, that means YouTube becomes a slightly better place to scroll mindlessly.

The upside? When you're on your 87th video about how Epstein didn’t kill himself, at least you’ll know a real person made it, not some AI stitched together with a synthetic voice and stock footage.

Rapid Fire

🖥️ OpenAI is reportedly days away from launching its own AI powered web browser, a direct shot at Google Chrome, which still dominates over two thirds of the global browser market. But this isn't just a reskinned ChatGPT. The browser is designed to cut down on traditional scrolling and link hopping, instead serving information directly through an AI interface. Think less browsing, more getting what you need fast. It’s part of a broader push to embed AI deeper into everyday tasks, and if adopted by even a fraction of ChatGPT’s 400 million weekly users, it could chip away at one of Google’s most valuable assets: user data.

Right now, OpenAI makes most of its money through subscriptions. But this move could open the door to ad revenue, or at least more control over how users interact with the web. Chrome feeds Google’s ad business by collecting data and funneling users into Google Search. If OpenAI can break that loop, even slightly, it’s a win. The browser will reportedly run on Chromium (same base as Chrome), include AI agents to do tasks for you, and was built with help from former Google Chrome engineers. Oh, and OpenAI once said they’d be interested in buying Chrome if the DOJ ever forced Google to sell it. Wild times.

🤖 Late last night, after an eventful day even by Elon’s standards, the newest version of Grok was unveiled to the public. Musk called it “the smartest AI in the world” and claimed it would ace the SAT every time it took it. In reality, the update sounds familiar: better benchmark scores, promises that it’s smarter, and then we all end up using it to write thank you emails.

Why it matters: Grok is in an all out sprint to gain ground in the LLM space. With a firehose of data from X alone, it’s positioned to make a legitimate run at the big players. The model itself is extremely powerful, has seemingly unlimited resources behind it, and is backed by the richest man on the planet. Elon remains a lightning rod, and Grok is no less controversial (just look at its responses earlier this week), but with enough momentum, Grok could become a real contender in the AI arms race.

💰 In an internal Microsoft meeting, Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff revealed that the company saved over 500 million dollars by shifting some of its call center operations to AI. This announcement comes on the heels of Microsoft laying off more than 15,000 employees this year alone.

As we all know, there’s nothing quite like getting help from a robot instead of a real human being. While the cost savings are significant, it’s hard to celebrate when those savings came at the expense of people’s jobs. As conversations around AI and the future of work continue to heat up, this feels like a clear and unsettling sign of where things might be headed.

Polling Zone

Meme Check

Tech Radar

If there were a Florida of the world, a place where any headline could drop and no one would be surprised, it would be Dubai. So if I told you a restaurant there is debuting the first ever AI chef, would you be more shocked that it's an AI or that it's not happening somewhere else? Honestly, it’s a toss-up.

Later this year, a place called WOOHOO is introducing the world’s first AI-powered kitchen assistant. It won’t be flipping steaks, but it will suggest recipes based on your mood, seasonal ingredients, and creative takes on classic dishes. With chatbots already in our inboxes and offices, the kitchen was just the next logical stop.

Recently Deployed

A new AI model called Centaur just took a massive leap in understanding human behavior. Trained on 10 million real decisions from psych studies, it can now predict what a person will do in nearly any situation with 64 percent accuracy. It doesn’t just mimic what’s been done before either. Centaur can handle brand new scenarios, adapt on the fly, and even estimate how fast someone will react. Basically, it’s like a digital twin that knows your moves better than you do.

This opens the door for big changes in education, mental health, and behavioral science. Researchers could use it to test teaching strategies before stepping into a classroom or simulate how people with different mental health profiles respond to stress. Right now, Centaur is just predicting behavior, but eventually it might help explain why we think the way we do. That’s a big deal.

That’s a wrap for today.

That’s all for today. Between YouTube cracking down on AI junk, Centaur trying to outthink us, and Elon doing Elon things, it’s clear we are in the weird part of the internet timeline. If it feels like the tech world is moving faster than your attention span, that’s because it is.

Stick around. We will keep breaking it down without the fluff, the hype, or the corporate speak. Just the stuff that actually matters and maybe the occasional AI chef named WOOHOO.