AI slop is the stuff that gets published because it exists, not because it is good. Fluent, tidy, vaguely positive and empty. Your customers have seen a great deal of it by now and have become quick at spotting it, often without being able to say exactly what gave it away.
The useful skill is spotting it first. This is a field guide to the tells, by format, followed by a checklist to run before anything goes live.
One clarification before we start. Using AI does not make something slop. Plenty of good work begins as a machine draft. Slop is what you get when the draft is also the final version.
Why it costs you
There are two kinds of damage, and they compound.
Trust. When a reader recognises generic machine copy, they do not just discount that paragraph. They start wondering what else nobody checked: the prices, the specifications, the delivery promise. For a business selling anything considered or expensive, that doubt is costly.
Search. Search engines have said for years that they want content written for people, with evidence of first-hand experience and expertise. Pages that restate what is already everywhere give them no reason to rank yours. The same goes for AI search tools, which tend to cite sources that say something specific. There is more on that in how to get found in AI search answers.
Tells in written copy
No single tell proves anything. Three or four in one piece and you should assume it has not been edited.
- The interchangeable opening. A first sentence about how fast the world is changing, which would fit any article on any subject.
- The swap test fails. Replace your company name with a competitor’s. If nothing else needs to change, the copy says nothing about you.
- Everything comes in threes. Three adjectives, three benefits, three bullet points, every time, whether or not there were three things to say.
- The false contrast. “It’s not just a product, it’s a partnership.” Once is a flourish. Five times is a pattern.
- Stock vocabulary. Words that people rarely say aloud but models reach for constantly. You will have your own list. Start it now.
- Hedging on everything. “Can help to”, “may potentially”, “in many cases”. No claim firm enough to be wrong.
- Bullets with bold lead-ins all the same length. A neat grid of points, each as important as the last, none developed.
- The recap ending. A final paragraph that begins by announcing a conclusion and then repeats the headings.
- No names, no numbers, no places. Nothing that required anyone to know your business.
The last one is the most reliable. Real expertise leaks specifics. Slop is smooth all the way through.
Tells in images
Image generators have improved quickly, so the classic giveaways are getting rarer. Look for these instead:
- Text in the scene. Signs, labels, book spines and screens with letters that almost form words.
- Hands and joins. Fingers, jewellery, spectacle arms, where a strap meets a bag.
- Repeating things. Windows, railings, keyboard keys, teeth. Patterns that drift or merge.
- The glossy sameness. A lighting style and skin texture that looks like every other generated image, whatever the subject.
- Wrong country. American plug sockets, road markings or office layouts in an image meant to show a business in Hampshire.
- Your product, nearly. A machine, uniform or building that resembles yours but with details invented.
That last one deserves care. An image that misrepresents what you sell can be a problem beyond looking careless.
Tells in SEO pages
Search-led pages are where slop is produced in bulk, because the temptation to generate fifty of them is strong.
- Location pages that differ only by place name. Same paragraphs, town swapped.
- FAQ sections nobody asked. Questions written to hold a keyword, with answers that restate the question.
- The long preamble. Three paragraphs defining the topic before the page gets to what the searcher wanted.
- Headings that read like a list of search queries. Stacked one after another with a thin paragraph under each.
- Confident and wrong. Out-of-date regulations, features your product does not have, or advice meant for another country.
- Nothing first-hand. No photos of real work, no process, no opinion about what tends to go wrong.
If you inherit a site and suspect this has happened, a proper audit will show the scale. See how to read a website audit.
Tells in emails
- The warm nothing. “I hope this email finds you well” followed by a compliment that could apply to any company.
- Fake personalisation. A reference to your “impressive work in the manufacturing sector” lifted from your own homepage.
- Leftovers. Square brackets, placeholder names, or a stray line that begins “Here is a revised version”.
- The wrong register. Breezy enthusiasm sent to a finance director, or stiff formality sent to a customer of ten years.
- Long and even. Five paragraphs of equal length where two lines would have done.
Email is where slop does the fastest damage, because it lands in front of a named individual who then remembers who sent it.
The pre-publish checklist
Run this on anything customer-facing. It takes about ten minutes for a typical page once you are used to it.
Truth
- Every number, date, name and product detail checked against a source the model did not write
- Every link opens and goes where it claims to
- Any claim about a customer, competitor or regulation verified, or removed
- Nothing describes a feature, service or guarantee you do not offer
Substance
- The piece makes one clear point, and you can state it in a sentence
- It passes the swap test: it could not sit on a competitor’s site unchanged
- It contains at least two things only your company would know or say
- The opening paragraph could not be deleted without loss
Voice
- Read aloud, start to finish, by a person
- Banned words and stock phrases removed
- Hedges cut wherever you are prepared to stand by the claim
- The ending stops when the content does
Images
- Zoomed in and checked for text, hands, joins and repeats
- Looks like the UK, if it is meant to
- Does not misrepresent your product, premises or people
- You know where it came from and that you may use it
Ownership
- A named person has read the final version and approved it
If you only have time for one check, do the swap test. It catches more than any other.
When you find it in your own back catalogue
You probably will. The practical approach is to rank pages by how much traffic or revenue they carry and fix from the top. Rewrite the ones that matter with real detail, merge the thin ones, and remove what serves nobody. Then put a review step in place so the pile does not rebuild itself. A one-page AI policy is the simplest way to make that stick.
If you would rather have someone else do the checking, this is the work we do: AI-assisted where it helps, with a named person reading, correcting and signing off before anything reaches you. Here is how that works.