TikTok serves 59% AI slop to new users, with children's content hit hardest, Kapwing study reveals

Nearly 60% of TikTok videos shown to new users are AI slop, study finds

Kapwing 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. At the other end of the spectrum, fitness, music, and fashion content remained almost entirely human-made, each below two percent. One hashtag in particular illustrates the scale of the problem. Within #CartoonKids, 97 out of 100 videos checked were AI-generated, leaving just three that appeared to be made by humans. Related tags were nearly as bad: #cartoons and #babysong both hit 83 percent, and #forkids reached 79 percent. The formula behind these videos is recognisable to anyone who has stumbled across them. Familiar cartoon characters appear in bizarre scenarios, educational lessons are riddled with factual errors, characters speak in synthetic voices, and animations shift and morph in ways that do not quite make sense. A counting lesson that gets the numbers wrong may seem absurd to an adult, but a preschooler does not have the context to notice. Dr Dana Suskind, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Chicago, described the phenomenon as "toddler AI misinformation at an industrial scale," according to reporting on the study. The concern is not just that individual videos are bad, but that generative AI enables the creation of endless streams of them at a pace no human creator could match. The problem extends well beyond content aimed at children. Educational, science, health, and history videos were among the categories most heavily saturated with AI-generated material, which is particularly damaging because those are the topics where accuracy matters most. A poorly generated comedy skit is easy to scroll past. A history lesson filled with fabricated details or a health video presenting misleading advice is a different kind of failure. TikTok's recommendation engine is designed to adapt quickly, using signals like watch time, likes, follows, and scrolling behaviour to personalise what each user sees. But Kapwing's research focuses on what happens before that personalisation kicks in, when a new account has provided no behavioural data and the algorithm is essentially guessing. The result is that AI slop has become TikTok's default first impression. For a platform that built its growth on the strength of its recommendation algorithm, that is a significant problem. TikTok is not unaware of the issue. The company introduced controls in November 2025 that allow users to increase or decrease the amount of AI-generated content in their feeds, and it has invested in AI literacy initiatives. Kapwing argues those passive controls are not enough, and the data suggests the measures have not meaningfully reduced the volume of AI slop reaching new users. The platform also faces growing legal pressure over its handling of children's content. Florida sued TikTok earlier this month under its child social media law, alleging the platform let minors onto the app and misled parents about the content available to them. The AI slop findings add another dimension to the regulatory scrutiny: even when children are on the platform legally, the content they encounter may be overwhelmingly low-quality and machine-generated. The comparison with YouTube is instructive. Kapwing found that roughly 21 percent of YouTube Shorts recommended to a new account were AI slop, less than half the TikTok rate. YouTube has taken a more aggressive enforcement approach, terminating 16 channels with a combined 35 million subscribers and nearly five billion lifetime views under its inauthentic content policy in January 2026. That crackdown has drawn criticism for catching legitimate faceless creators in the crossfire, but the gap between platforms remains stark. The broader pattern is consistent across social media. AI-generated content is flooding music streaming platforms as well, where services like Deezer now flag more than 20,000 fully AI-generated tracks per day. The incentive structure rewards volume over quality: if a creator or bot operator can produce dozens of videos in the time it once took to make one, platforms become saturated with content that is technically watchable but offers little substance. It is worth noting the study's limitations. Kapwing is a video editing tool company with a commercial interest in human-created content, and the classification of what counts as "AI slop" involved manual review rather than automated detection. The researchers built a seed list of 20 popular TikTok categories, selected at least three popular tags for each, and reviewed videos for obvious AI-generated visuals and scripts, a methodology that is transparent but subjective. The study also captures a snapshot from May 2026, and TikTok's algorithm and moderation policies could change. The platform has not publicly disputed the findings. Still, the scale of the data, more than 10,000 videos across 20 categories plus the 500-video new-account test, makes it the most comprehensive examination of AI content density on TikTok published so far. And the children's content findings are difficult to dismiss regardless of methodology: when 97 out of 100 videos in a kids' hashtag are machine-generated, the precise definition of "slop" matters less than the fact that virtually nothing in that feed was made by a human. Social media became popular because it offered something distinctly human: creativity, personality, expertise, and connection. AI can imitate all of those things with increasing skill, but imitation is not the same as authenticity. When nearly six out of every ten videos a new user sees are AI-generated, the question is no longer whether AI slop exists on TikTok. The question is whether it has become a defining feature of the platform.

TikTok's AI slop problem is worse than you think -- and kids are seeing the most of it

TikTok has spent years perfecting the art of knowing exactly what you want to watch next. Open the app, scroll a few times, and suddenly it's serving videos that feel uncannily tailored to your interests. But what happens before TikTok learns who you are? According to new research from video editing platform Kapwing, the answer is increasingly AI slop. The study found that nearly 60% of the videos shown to a brand-new TikTok account were low-quality AI-generated content. That's not a niche problem buried in obscure corners of the platform. It's the first impression TikTok is making on new users before the algorithm even begins personalizing their feed. And if that sounds concerning, the findings around children's content are even harder to ignore. The algorithm's junk-food era TikTok's recommendation engine is designed to adapt quickly. The platform looks at everything from likes and follows to watch time and scrolling habits before deciding what to show you next. To understand what an untouched TikTok experience looks like, researchers created a fresh account and examined the first 500 videos served on the For You page. The results were startling: 294 of those videos were classified as AI slop. That means a new user is more likely to encounter AI-generated junk than human-created content before TikTok has any meaningful data about their preferences. Perhaps even more telling is how TikTok compares to other platforms. Kapwing previously ran a similar experiment on YouTube Shorts and found substantially less AI-generated clutter. TikTok wasn't just worse -- it was dramatically worse. At this point, AI content isn't merely sneaking into the platform. It's becoming part of the platform's default aesthetic. And that may be the real story here. For many users, especially younger ones, AI-generated videos aren't an occasional oddity anymore. They're becoming normal. Sesame Street meets the uncanny valley The most alarming section of the report focuses on content aimed at children. Researchers found that more than half of the videos in TikTok's Kids category qualified as AI-generated "slop." One hashtag in particular, #CartoonKids, was almost completely overtaken by AI-generated material, with only a handful of videos appearing to be made by humans. Anyone who has stumbled across these videos will recognize the formula immediately -- familiar cartoon characters appear in bizarre scenarios, educational lessons are riddled with mistakes, characters speak with unsettling synthetic voices, animations shift and morph in ways that don't quite make sense. Recommended Videos The content often resembles children's programming at first glance, but falls apart the moment you pay attention. That's what makes it troubling. Young children aren't equipped to distinguish between high-quality educational content and an AI-generated imitation that confidently presents incorrect information. A counting lesson that gets the numbers wrong may seem ridiculous to an adult, but a preschooler doesn't have the same context. The internet has always had questionable content for kids. What's changed is the scale. Generative AI enables the creation of endless streams of videos at a pace no human creator could ever match. And TikTok's recommendation system appears more than willing to distribute them. The problem extends beyond children's content, too. The study found that educational, science, health, and history videos were among the categories most heavily affected by AI slop. That's particularly unfortunate because these are precisely the topics where accuracy matters most. A poorly generated comedy skit is easy enough to scroll past. A history lesson filled with fabricated details or a health video presenting misleading advice is a different story altogether. To be fair, not every creator using AI is producing garbage. Some creators are experimenting with AI-generated presenters and visuals to make educational topics more engaging. In the best cases, AI functions as a tool that supports the creator's work rather than replacing it. But the report highlights a growing reality across social media: the incentives often reward volume over quality. If a creator can generate dozens of videos in the time it once took to make one, platforms become flooded with content that is technically watchable but offers very little substance. TikTok seems aware that users are growing tired of it. The company has introduced controls that allow users to reduce the amount of AI-generated content they see and has invested in AI literacy initiatives. Yet the research suggests those efforts may be struggling to keep pace with the flood. The irony is that social media became popular because it offered something distinctly human: creativity, personality, expertise, and connection. AI can imitate all of those things surprisingly well. But imitation isn't the same as authenticity. When nearly six out of every ten videos a new user sees are AI-generated, the question is no longer whether AI slop exists on TikTok. The question is whether it has become a defining feature of the platform. And for a generation of children growing up with these feeds, that answer matters more than ever.