Snopes reports that AI-generated political “slop” (low-quality, emotionally charged content made for ad revenue) has become a growing share of the AI content it fact-checks, rising from about 22% of its AI stories involving public officials in 2024 to roughly 45% so far in 2026.

Experts disagree on its effect: some say it may not change votes but can entrench existing beliefs and erode a shared sense of reality, while others are more concerned that people increasingly dismiss real events as AI-made.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Thorson says that her research indicates political content is actually the “substantial minority of most people's feeds.” There is not much risk that AI slop could actually sway people's votes, she says, because the people consuming it are usually already “locked into one side or the other.”

“There has long been a tendency for people to assume that folks are dumb and, ‘Well, they're going to be hoodwinked by misinformation,’” says Thorson. “People aren't that stupid. People approach what they see on social media with an enormous degree of skepticism.”

Read more in the Snopes article, “Political AI Slop is Flooding Social Media. Could It Sway the Midterms and Harm Democracy?” 

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