TikTok’s For You feed is drowning in AI-generated junk. Nearly 60% of videos shown to new users are low-quality AI creations, often called “AI slop.” That’s almost triple the amount found on YouTube Shorts.

A recent analysis scanned over 10,700 TikToks across popular categories. The results were bleak. AI slop dominates kids’ videos, science explainers, health tips, and history content. The hashtag #cartoonkids was nearly 100% AI-made, with only a handful of real human videos slipping through.

This isn’t harmless fluff. Experts warn that feeding children AI-generated nonsense risks wiring their brains with misinformation and confusing content. One preschool counting video, for example, mismatched numbers and cookies while flooding comments with gibberish likely designed to boost algorithmic visibility.

Other educational categories fare no better. AI presenters mimic human emotion so well they fool viewers. But the scripts often contain errors and distortions. History videos generated by AI risk spreading inaccuracies and biases because the technology fills gaps with guesswork from flawed training data.

Not every TikTok category is infected. Fashion, music, and fitness remain mostly human-made. These niches demand authentic creators and real performances, which AI can’t convincingly replicate yet.

TikTok claims it’s labeling over a billion AI-generated videos and offers users sliders to adjust AI content in their feeds. Yet new accounts get bombarded with AI slop by default. The controls are buried deep in settings, inaccessible to many. Meanwhile, the algorithm doubles down once it detects AI interest, serving even more synthetic content.

This glut of AI-generated videos raises broader concerns about platform governance and content moderation. As synthetic media blurs the line between real and fake, TikTok must do more than hand users a dial buried in menus. Active moderation and clearer labeling are overdue.

For now, new TikTok users—especially kids—face an uphill battle sifting through a sea of AI noise. The platform’s AI content problem isn’t a glitch. It’s baked into the feed.