TL;DRKapwing found 59% of TikTok videos shown to new accounts are AI slop, three times YouTube’s rate, with kids’ content the worst-hit category.
Nearly six out of every ten videos TikTok serves to a brand-new account are AI-generated junk. That is the central finding of a report published by video editing platform Kapwing, which analysed 10,742 TikTok videos across 20 popular categories and separately examined the first 500 videos shown on the For You page of a freshly created account.
Of those 500 videos, 294 were classified as AI slop, a term Kapwing defines as videos with obvious AI-generated visuals or low-quality compilations using clearly AI-generated scripts and voiceovers. The 59 percent rate is roughly three times the proportion found on YouTube in the same study, making TikTok’s default experience dramatically worse for anyone opening the app for the first time.
The numbers are worse for children. Kapwing found that 57 percent of videos in TikTok’s Kids category qualified as AI slop, the highest rate of any category the researchers examined. Science and education came next at 35 percent, followed by health at nearly 34 percent and history at roughly the same level.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!At the other end of the spectrum, fitness, music, and fashion content remained almost entirely human-made, each below two percent.
