A Flood of Images, A Drought of Truth
While America floods the world with images, China is wiring the world behind the scenes.
You may have heard the word “AI” so often lately that it just blends into the noise. But something significant happened this week, and it’s worth understanding—not as a tech story, but as a human one.
(…and maybe you noticed this newsletter now has a new title and logo—more about that later…)
The New Flood of “AI Slop”
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released a new image-generation tool called Sora 2 and within days it became more popular than the extremely popular ChatGPT AI system. Sora 2 turn words into short, realistic videos in seconds. Type “a cat playing piano at sunset”, and a clip of just that will appear as if magically.
Or type in this prompt:
“POV shot from the cameraman’s perspective. A giggling newborn baby with chubby cheeks gets excited and reaches out with tiny hands. In a sudden burst of playful energy, the baby thrusts forward, pressing its face and lips against the camera lens. The background is a cozy, softly blurred nursery. The feeling is surprising, joyful, and incredibly cute.”
And you’ll get this image:
Would this image fool you if you saw it in on social media or if someone sent it to you? Comments are on. Join the discussion!
Millions of people are already watching and sharing these videos, most without realizing that what they’re seeing isn’t real at all. And because they are so fast and relatively cheap to make (except, remember, we are also paying for them through our electric bills), users are so excited that they are generating ads, posts, and videos on every single platform.
Experts saw this coming and have been using the term for months already but legacy media outlets are now catching up (Associated Press / CNN).
“Slop” is not an insult. It is a fairly accurate observation. The internet is being filled with cheap, fast, mass-produced music, images, and videos designed to keep people scrolling instead of thinking.
It’s already blurring reality.
Deceased celebrities are now being recreated in all kinds of scenes all across the internet. A couple in Malaysia recently traveled across their country to visit a cable-car attraction they saw online only to discover it didn’t exist. It had been created by AI and they had been fooled.
Here are two images from the fake AI-generated video that shows a reporter introducing a tourist attraction that doesn’t exist:
A few companies are trying to respond. Pinterest has started to filter out most AI-generated results from search feeds, but most social platforms are aren’t fighting it because “AI slop” keeps people clicking, and clicks mean money.
What It Means for Us
This isn’t really about technology.
It’s about attention and profit.
When OpenAI was founded, it was a nonprofit promising to build AI for the benefit of humanity. That mission shifted when it became a for-profit corporation—and the results show it.
Now the business model depends on keeping you glued to the screen. And Sora 2 delivers exactly that with
Endless content with no context that rewire brain pathways.
Emotional stimulation without meaning.
More profit, less purpose.
Economists are already questioning whether the AI boom is a bubble—propped up by hype, speculation, and cheap credit rather than genuine progress.
We’ve seen this pattern before: Social media once promised connection but ended up monetizing division and distraction. Now AI is doing the same thing on a grander scale.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman says the “dangerous effects” of ChatGPT have been handled (without providing details on how) and announced plans to roll out erotica for adult users—because engagement still pays better than wisdom.
I saw a report this week that hit the nail on the head:
“We were told AI would help cure cancer. Instead, we got Sora 2.”
America’s Illusion vs. China’s Infrastructure
Now, while America is perfecting tools for distraction, China is embedding control. This should be raising more alarm bells. China is quietly wiring the world—installing servers, fiber, and data systems deep into the infrastructure that powers nations.
In my recent Epoch Times commentary, “Code-Trap Politics: China’s Quiet Bid to Control Global Infrastructure”, I wrote:
“Empires used to plant flags; now they install servers. The future of freedom may not hinge on who builds the smartest machine, but on who controls the ones we all rely on.”
That warning is now playing out.
A new 60 Minutes investigation has revealed that Chinese-linked hackers had infiltrated U.S. water systems, energy grids, and chemical plants. What’s remarkable is that U.S. agencies had known for two years—but only went public now, just as Washington–Beijing tensions spiked again.
If you’ve worked in media, you know timing is rarely accidental. Politically-sensitive stories like this are often held until it is considered the “right time” to release them.
Also on China news, this week I was invited to speak with former Congressman Matt Gaetz on OAN to discuss China’s new campaign against “youth pessimism” and why sadness is being banned across the country. Watch the full interview here.
So, in the AI arms race, we have two competing futures:
America’s version: a feed filled with distractions for humans.
China’s version: an infrastructure built for human control.
Both, on the surface, are hollowing out human agency. However, China has a 75-year history under a system of communism that inevitably leads that the end.
America, however, is still a land full of free human beings, and thus the potential to make choices that will shape the future in the direction of retaining human value.
If you’d like to go a layer deeper this week, I’ve put together a special Darker Details post for paid subscribers: “The Real Meanings Behind the New AI Language.”
It’s a glossary of the new words now shaping our digital world—terms like AI slop, agentic, superintelligence, AI psychosis, and endless scroll—each translated into plain human language (with a touch of Aussie sarcasm ;) Once you understand the words, you start to see the system.
A New Chapter
You may have noticed that this newsletter has a new name and logo: HUMAN VALUE.
I’ve been writing so much on human value, what it is, and how to treasure it, that I felt the previous name, Mind Armor, needed a little updating to better represent the full mission of this platform.
Mind Armor was about protecting your mind from manipulation.
Human Value is about seeing the full picture—how technology, economics, media, and power intersect, and countering the narratives that have created the epidemics of loneliness, stress, and anxiety in our world today.
The logo at the top is new, and you’ll see more content on the Human Value website each week, but the purpose hasn’t changed:
To remind us that truth still matters, and so do we.
See you next week,
~ Kay
PS. Comments are on. Please share your thoughts and join the discussion. And share this information with a friend!