September 7, 2025 • 13 mins
Book in for Inventium’s GenAI Productivity Upgrade here: https://inventium.com.au/genai-cohort/
Have you ever received a 10-page document that looked impressive, only to realise it was clearly spat out by AI, with no real human thought behind it? That’s what AI expert Neo Aplin calls AI slop: content that’s high on volume but low on value.
In this conversation, Neo and Amantha unpack:
- Why AI slop is becoming increasingly common in workplaces
- The hidden costs of drowning teams in AI-generated documents
- Why creating more content is no longer a measure of good work
- How to shift the focus from volume to targeted value
- Practical strategies for making your work stand out in an AI-saturated world
If you’ve ever felt buried under AI-generated fluff - or worried your own work is being lost in the noise - this episode will help you cut through the slop and get back to what really matters.
My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you noticed an explosion of long AI generated documents
that look very polished but are actually full of rubbish.
You're not imagining it. AI slop is on the rise,
content that's created quickly, looks impressive but has no real
critical thought behind it. Today, I'm joined by Inventium's AI expert,
(00:23):
Neo Applin. Neo is going to unpack why aislop is
becoming so common, particularly in workplaces, the risks that it
poses for organizations, and most importantly, what you can do
to make sure your own work stands out as being
thoughtful and valuable in an AI saturated world. Welcome to
(00:49):
How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
Before we get into today's episode, I have been geeking
out over the research on AI adoption in the workplace,
and the data is super clear. The people who master
JENAI now aren't just getting ahead, they are creating entirely
(01:13):
new levels of productivity that previously seemed impossible. Because in
a nutshell, what I'm seeing there are two types of professionals.
There are those that are very fluent in AI, and
there are those that are just dabbling and pasting prompts
from LinkedIn and thinking that they're mastering AI. So if
you are in the latter group, this is what I recommend.
(01:35):
Inventium's Genai Productivity Upgrade is a way to make sure
you are in that first group who are fully fluent
in AI. It is a twelve week course designed to
move you from dabbler to productivity machine. No fluff, just
practical strategies that will pay off from week one, saving
you at least ten hours every single week. You'll learn
(01:57):
how to automate the grunt work, use A as your
second brain to excel at your job, learn how to
create AI agents that wing you back hours every time
you use them, and so much more. Whether you're a
complete beginner or already using AI most days, We've got
you covered, starting with prompting fundamentals and going all the
way through to advanced automations and agentic AI. We kick
(02:20):
off on October fifteen and spots are limited. Visit inventium
dot com dot a U forward slash Genai hyphen cohort
to secure your place now and that link is also
in the show notes. You've literally got nothing to lose
because there's a seven day money back guarantee, so head
over to that link. It's in the show notes and
(02:43):
read more about the program today. Neo, I've heard you
use the term AI slop before, and I guess it
is kind of becoming an industry term if you like,
can you explain what AI slop actually is.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
The term is being widely used for AI generated stuff
of low value, and it can be anything from lots
of words like documents and things like that right through
to AI videos. You've probably seen a lot of AI
videos on your social feeds that is also aislot, but
effectively it's AI material that is not valuable, that seems
(03:23):
to be created easily and with a lot of volume
and more and more volume coming up soon. So yeah,
that's more about low value AI created stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And why is aislot becoming so common? I feel like
I'm experiencing it like every single day of my workday.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it in our
social feeds, We're seeing it in our LinkedIn there's an
awful lot of people creating lots of LinkedIn posts. Now
we're seeing it in our workplaces with documents, and the
reason is it's easy. Now. We used to think about
productive works someone who could create things. And so Neo's
awesome because you can create two strategy papers and he's
(04:05):
done for analytics things, and three documents and four procedures.
But here's the thing. These days with AI, I can
create those things in five minutes. You know, three dot points,
create me a document, bam, it just does it. What
this does, though, is it creates content overload and lots
of documents that don't really move the dial that they're
(04:26):
just documents or artifacts or pictures for the sake of them.
The problem is people then are going to get too
many documents to read, and they won't be accurate, they
won't be targeted, they won't be exactly what you need,
the business needs, what the customer needs, and you won't
know which pieces of these documents are actually important versus
(04:47):
AI boiler plate. And so we will get buried in
these documents because people will want to feel like they're
productive and producing lots of things, and so we will
then get very, very sick of it with this AI slop.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
To me, just that the time wastage component is so frustrating.
Like I had a conversation with someone this is like
a couple of months ago about a potential partnership opportunity.
And this person then said, okay, great, I'll you know,
I'll put together some thoughts fee to review. And I
received this ten page document that was just obviously generated
(05:26):
but with jen AI. But the problem was no critical
human thought had gone into it, which then means the
ball is on my court to review this AI slop.
And then I'm feeling really frustrated because there go several
hours of my time and ah, it just made me
so frustrated. So my question to you is how do
(05:48):
we actually fix this problem.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
It's going to be tough because I can create a
document maybe this person I said three or four dot
points and now flesh out the document please, and then
you've got a ten page document that you've got to
plow through. Now you're going to get sick of this,
or people will get sick of this. We're going to
go get lots of these ten page documents and slide
decks and all those kind of things. So we're just
(06:13):
going to go, AI summarize that, will you? And when
you summarize it, do you think you're going to get
the saying three or four dot points that they put
in to create them. With AI, we're not, so we're
going to get the AI equivalent of I don't know
if it's politically correct or not, but Chinese whispers. You
know that thing where kids you'd say, you know, Neo
likes to talk on the telephone, and then it comes
(06:33):
out at the other end as Bob likes to eat
elephants or something. You know, So it's going to be that.
But with AI, because I'm going to be creating documents
easily with my three or four dot points, you're going
to get it inundated. You'll summarize them, but the points
will be lost. And so how do we stop this? Well,
(06:55):
stopping document creations not the answer. I think we still
need artifacts, we still need things to be created. But
how do we then make sure that people know what
the important points are? And I think within workplaces it's
something to be discussed. Like the first thing to be
discussed is, hey, if we're not careful, we are going
to be inundated with slop. So therefore, let's make sure
(07:16):
that targeted documents are much much more valuable than ai've
created stuff. So how do we together have agreements on
creating valuable documents. Maybe it's the first step. The second
is when you create documents, how do we call out
to humans and AI what the important points are. I
like the concept of if you've seen a dummy's guide
(07:39):
or an idiot's guide or Cliff's notes, they've got these
little callouts sometimes at the start of certain paragraphs or
sections and here's the important points. So maybe we need
to do things like that so that people and AI
can pull out the important points and then if they
want to go deeper they can. But ultimately it's a
discussion for each workplace for what our normal are as.
(08:01):
For society. I think that there's going to be a
difficult discussion to have. So maybe we need to be
feeling okay with the Hey, I got this ten page
document from you. Can you tell me what's really important
out of this? Because other than that, I'm just going
to summarize this because it doesn't feel like it lands.
And maybe we feel okay saying that rather than feeling
awkward at the moment saying I think AI generated all
(08:23):
your stuff. You know, maybe we need to be okay
having that discussion.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So if I'm a leader in an organization, what should
I be doing differently? Do I need to be thinking
about like policies behind how people create content, or.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Like what do I do? It's going to be tough.
The first thing is this is like a change management challenge.
We've all got. This is a new tool, everyone's got.
What do we do? What are the norms? How do
we deal with this? Leaders obviously need to lead from
the front. So when you're creating stuff, leader, don't create
AI slop because everyone and your team will then create
(09:03):
aislop thinking, well, Neo and Amantha did it somewhere, we
can do that as well. So yeah, you've got to
lead by example. The other is, let's have that discussion
now with your teams. While we've got these tools and
we're starting to learn what the norms and what good
looks like and what nice polite behaviors in the workplace are,
(09:25):
let's start to have those discussions.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
We didn't need to have those discussions with other AI
like word and spell check and grammar check and things
like that. They didn't seem to be creating so much
problems as this will. But yeah, have those discussions about
what good looks like. If we're going to create a
document how do we then call out to people and
AI what the important points are. How if we create documents,
(09:52):
it needs to be targeted as opposed to volume for
volume sake, And if it's not targeted, how do we
as a team asked question politely about did you just
get AI to create this slop versus Hey, look, I'm
not quite sure this one hits the mark. So it's
going to be a discussion, and I think that now
is the time to have the discussion, otherwise we're going
(10:14):
to be buried and then people will be feeling it
awkward if we've got to change the norms later.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Okay, So out of all that, like, what are the
key things that you would love people to start doing
or stop doing based on this AI slop problem?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
First off, we need to be kind to each other.
Don't just say here's ten page documents that you've created
in three seconds and expect them to go through. So
let's have an internal reframe where more content doesn't mean
good work. Instead, targeted content means great work. How do
(10:53):
we then call out parts from that targeted content to
show that it is actually targeted. So that's where I
like the idea of the dummies guide the cliffs notes
kind of thing where you've got main takeaways from each section,
maybe in a yellow box at the top of the
section so it's easily found out, and things like that,
so that people and AI can pull out those main
(11:14):
points really immediately, but if they want to go down
they can and let's figure out what that needs to
be for our workforce. So yeah, let's have let's be
kind to each other, not create a whole bunch of
documents for the sake of it. Let's be clear about
what's important in those documents. And when you do create
a document with AI, I think the last thing is
(11:37):
how do we show people in our team how that
was created? What I mean by that is I'd like
to borrow something from the Australian kangaroo made in Australia.
You know when you see that green and yellow kangaroo,
you've made it, it's been a mad in Australia. Or
if you're in a supermarket and you look at food,
they've got that bar chart on how much of that
food is made in Australia. How do we show to
(11:59):
our workmates how much of AI was used in this?
So if it was ninety nine percent generated with AI.
How do we show that to our colleagues as opposed
to look, this is all me, but I've got maybe
AI to do some critique on it, and so that's
probably a last more extension one. But in reality, let's
just be kind to each other targeted content and we'll
(12:19):
call out what the most important parts of each section
is in the document.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Thank you so much, Neo. I do hope that even
if just one AI slop document does not get produced
because of this chat, then we've done our job, So
thank you.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
You're welcome. Or the other one is if people have
one conversation about AI slop and it's not an awkward conversation,
they're all on the same page. That's another thing I'd
like as well.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
My biggest takeout from this chat with Neo is that
we need to agree that volume of content, like producing
lots of reports for example, is no longer a measure
of performance. We need to get up at rewarding and
recognizing thoughtful and targeted communication. So if you found this
(13:07):
conversation useful, please share it with the colleague who's maybe
also wrestling with aislop in their workplace. And if you're
looking to take your AI skills up to the next level.
In Ventium's Genai productivity upgrade is kicking off on October fifteen,
and there is a link to more info and bookings
in the show notes. If you like today's show, make
(13:30):
sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be
alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded
on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of
the Cooler Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber
for doing the sound mix.
Have you noticed an explosion of long AI generated documents
that look very polished but are actually full of rubbish.
You're not imagining it. AI slop is on the rise,
content that's created quickly, looks impressive but has no real
critical thought behind it. Today, I'm joined by Inventium's AI expert,
(00:23):
Neo Applin. Neo is going to unpack why aislop is
becoming so common, particularly in workplaces, the risks that it
poses for organizations, and most importantly, what you can do
to make sure your own work stands out as being
thoughtful and valuable in an AI saturated world. Welcome to
(00:49):
How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
Before we get into today's episode, I have been geeking
out over the research on AI adoption in the workplace,
and the data is super clear. The people who master
JENAI now aren't just getting ahead, they are creating entirely
(01:13):
new levels of productivity that previously seemed impossible. Because in
a nutshell, what I'm seeing there are two types of professionals.
There are those that are very fluent in AI, and
there are those that are just dabbling and pasting prompts
from LinkedIn and thinking that they're mastering AI. So if
you are in the latter group, this is what I recommend.
(01:35):
Inventium's Genai Productivity Upgrade is a way to make sure
you are in that first group who are fully fluent
in AI. It is a twelve week course designed to
move you from dabbler to productivity machine. No fluff, just
practical strategies that will pay off from week one, saving
you at least ten hours every single week. You'll learn
(01:57):
how to automate the grunt work, use A as your
second brain to excel at your job, learn how to
create AI agents that wing you back hours every time
you use them, and so much more. Whether you're a
complete beginner or already using AI most days, We've got
you covered, starting with prompting fundamentals and going all the
way through to advanced automations and agentic AI. We kick
(02:20):
off on October fifteen and spots are limited. Visit inventium
dot com dot a U forward slash Genai hyphen cohort
to secure your place now and that link is also
in the show notes. You've literally got nothing to lose
because there's a seven day money back guarantee, so head
over to that link. It's in the show notes and
(02:43):
read more about the program today. Neo, I've heard you
use the term AI slop before, and I guess it
is kind of becoming an industry term if you like,
can you explain what AI slop actually is.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
The term is being widely used for AI generated stuff
of low value, and it can be anything from lots
of words like documents and things like that right through
to AI videos. You've probably seen a lot of AI
videos on your social feeds that is also aislot, but
effectively it's AI material that is not valuable, that seems
(03:23):
to be created easily and with a lot of volume
and more and more volume coming up soon. So yeah,
that's more about low value AI created stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And why is aislot becoming so common? I feel like
I'm experiencing it like every single day of my workday.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it in our
social feeds, We're seeing it in our LinkedIn there's an
awful lot of people creating lots of LinkedIn posts. Now
we're seeing it in our workplaces with documents, and the
reason is it's easy. Now. We used to think about
productive works someone who could create things. And so Neo's
awesome because you can create two strategy papers and he's
(04:05):
done for analytics things, and three documents and four procedures.
But here's the thing. These days with AI, I can
create those things in five minutes. You know, three dot points,
create me a document, bam, it just does it. What
this does, though, is it creates content overload and lots
of documents that don't really move the dial that they're
(04:26):
just documents or artifacts or pictures for the sake of them.
The problem is people then are going to get too
many documents to read, and they won't be accurate, they
won't be targeted, they won't be exactly what you need,
the business needs, what the customer needs, and you won't
know which pieces of these documents are actually important versus
(04:47):
AI boiler plate. And so we will get buried in
these documents because people will want to feel like they're
productive and producing lots of things, and so we will
then get very, very sick of it with this AI slop.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
To me, just that the time wastage component is so frustrating.
Like I had a conversation with someone this is like
a couple of months ago about a potential partnership opportunity.
And this person then said, okay, great, I'll you know,
I'll put together some thoughts fee to review. And I
received this ten page document that was just obviously generated
(05:26):
but with jen AI. But the problem was no critical
human thought had gone into it, which then means the
ball is on my court to review this AI slop.
And then I'm feeling really frustrated because there go several
hours of my time and ah, it just made me
so frustrated. So my question to you is how do
(05:48):
we actually fix this problem.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
It's going to be tough because I can create a
document maybe this person I said three or four dot
points and now flesh out the document please, and then
you've got a ten page document that you've got to
plow through. Now you're going to get sick of this,
or people will get sick of this. We're going to
go get lots of these ten page documents and slide
decks and all those kind of things. So we're just
(06:13):
going to go, AI summarize that, will you? And when
you summarize it, do you think you're going to get
the saying three or four dot points that they put
in to create them. With AI, we're not, so we're
going to get the AI equivalent of I don't know
if it's politically correct or not, but Chinese whispers. You
know that thing where kids you'd say, you know, Neo
likes to talk on the telephone, and then it comes
(06:33):
out at the other end as Bob likes to eat
elephants or something. You know, So it's going to be that.
But with AI, because I'm going to be creating documents
easily with my three or four dot points, you're going
to get it inundated. You'll summarize them, but the points
will be lost. And so how do we stop this? Well,
(06:55):
stopping document creations not the answer. I think we still
need artifacts, we still need things to be created. But
how do we then make sure that people know what
the important points are? And I think within workplaces it's
something to be discussed. Like the first thing to be
discussed is, hey, if we're not careful, we are going
to be inundated with slop. So therefore, let's make sure
(07:16):
that targeted documents are much much more valuable than ai've
created stuff. So how do we together have agreements on
creating valuable documents. Maybe it's the first step. The second
is when you create documents, how do we call out
to humans and AI what the important points are. I
like the concept of if you've seen a dummy's guide
(07:39):
or an idiot's guide or Cliff's notes, they've got these
little callouts sometimes at the start of certain paragraphs or
sections and here's the important points. So maybe we need
to do things like that so that people and AI
can pull out the important points and then if they
want to go deeper they can. But ultimately it's a
discussion for each workplace for what our normal are as.
(08:01):
For society. I think that there's going to be a
difficult discussion to have. So maybe we need to be
feeling okay with the Hey, I got this ten page
document from you. Can you tell me what's really important
out of this? Because other than that, I'm just going
to summarize this because it doesn't feel like it lands.
And maybe we feel okay saying that rather than feeling
awkward at the moment saying I think AI generated all
(08:23):
your stuff. You know, maybe we need to be okay
having that discussion.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So if I'm a leader in an organization, what should
I be doing differently? Do I need to be thinking
about like policies behind how people create content, or.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Like what do I do? It's going to be tough.
The first thing is this is like a change management challenge.
We've all got. This is a new tool, everyone's got.
What do we do? What are the norms? How do
we deal with this? Leaders obviously need to lead from
the front. So when you're creating stuff, leader, don't create
AI slop because everyone and your team will then create
(09:03):
aislop thinking, well, Neo and Amantha did it somewhere, we
can do that as well. So yeah, you've got to
lead by example. The other is, let's have that discussion
now with your teams. While we've got these tools and
we're starting to learn what the norms and what good
looks like and what nice polite behaviors in the workplace are,
(09:25):
let's start to have those discussions.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
We didn't need to have those discussions with other AI
like word and spell check and grammar check and things
like that. They didn't seem to be creating so much
problems as this will. But yeah, have those discussions about
what good looks like. If we're going to create a
document how do we then call out to people and
AI what the important points are. How if we create documents,
(09:52):
it needs to be targeted as opposed to volume for
volume sake, And if it's not targeted, how do we
as a team asked question politely about did you just
get AI to create this slop versus Hey, look, I'm
not quite sure this one hits the mark. So it's
going to be a discussion, and I think that now
is the time to have the discussion, otherwise we're going
(10:14):
to be buried and then people will be feeling it
awkward if we've got to change the norms later.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Okay, So out of all that, like, what are the
key things that you would love people to start doing
or stop doing based on this AI slop problem?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
First off, we need to be kind to each other.
Don't just say here's ten page documents that you've created
in three seconds and expect them to go through. So
let's have an internal reframe where more content doesn't mean
good work. Instead, targeted content means great work. How do
(10:53):
we then call out parts from that targeted content to
show that it is actually targeted. So that's where I
like the idea of the dummies guide the cliffs notes
kind of thing where you've got main takeaways from each section,
maybe in a yellow box at the top of the
section so it's easily found out, and things like that,
so that people and AI can pull out those main
(11:14):
points really immediately, but if they want to go down
they can and let's figure out what that needs to
be for our workforce. So yeah, let's have let's be
kind to each other, not create a whole bunch of
documents for the sake of it. Let's be clear about
what's important in those documents. And when you do create
a document with AI, I think the last thing is
(11:37):
how do we show people in our team how that
was created? What I mean by that is I'd like
to borrow something from the Australian kangaroo made in Australia.
You know when you see that green and yellow kangaroo,
you've made it, it's been a mad in Australia. Or
if you're in a supermarket and you look at food,
they've got that bar chart on how much of that
food is made in Australia. How do we show to
(11:59):
our workmates how much of AI was used in this?
So if it was ninety nine percent generated with AI.
How do we show that to our colleagues as opposed
to look, this is all me, but I've got maybe
AI to do some critique on it, and so that's
probably a last more extension one. But in reality, let's
just be kind to each other targeted content and we'll
(12:19):
call out what the most important parts of each section
is in the document.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Thank you so much, Neo. I do hope that even
if just one AI slop document does not get produced
because of this chat, then we've done our job, So
thank you.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
You're welcome. Or the other one is if people have
one conversation about AI slop and it's not an awkward conversation,
they're all on the same page. That's another thing I'd
like as well.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
My biggest takeout from this chat with Neo is that
we need to agree that volume of content, like producing
lots of reports for example, is no longer a measure
of performance. We need to get up at rewarding and
recognizing thoughtful and targeted communication. So if you found this
(13:07):
conversation useful, please share it with the colleague who's maybe
also wrestling with aislop in their workplace. And if you're
looking to take your AI skills up to the next level.
In Ventium's Genai productivity upgrade is kicking off on October fifteen,
and there is a link to more info and bookings
in the show notes. If you like today's show, make
(13:30):
sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be
alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded
on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of
the Cooler Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber
for doing the sound mix.
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