AI Era May Lead to a More Homogeneous Internet, Not Just a Garbage One
Journalist Kristaps Taranda argues that artificial intelligence might not create a wasteland of bad content but rather a sea of homogeneous, professionally looking but ultimately meaningless communication.
In an opinion piece, journalist Kristaps Taranda discusses the impact of AI on internet content. He states that AI is neither good nor bad—it is a tool, similar to Excel or Canva, but with a difference in scale: AI makes professional-looking content accessible to almost everyone, which means it is no longer a competitive advantage.
Taranda believes the greatest risk is not poor-quality content but homogeneity. The internet could become filled with content that is formally correct but too similar to everything else to be memorable. He mentions the term “AI slop” but notes that the problem is not that content is always bad, but that much of it begins to look like the average of everything that has come before.
The author references the theory of “model collapse”: if AI models learn from content created by other models, they risk reproducing their own average version, losing unpopular ideas and nuances. In marketing, a similar trend is already visible: companies use safe forms and “best practices,” resulting in content that sounds the same.
Taranda points out that in digital advertising, dozens of variants are not bad, but they lack a reason to make people stop. AI accelerates the scaling of mediocrity—if the idea is weak, the result is merely a feeling of activity. Professional appearance becomes an entry ticket, not an advantage.
He does not advocate abandoning AI—that would be an overreaction. Clients do not care if the first draft was AI-generated as long as the final result is useful. However, using AI does not automatically make a company smarter; it may only make it faster.
Ultimately, the question is not what AI can do, but what a company does with that capability. When execution becomes cheaper, choice becomes more expensive. Taranda predicts that we will see companies that do a lot technically but say very little strategically.
