Slopaganda is a portmanteau of "slop" and "propaganda", referring to AI-generated content designed to manipulate beliefs, emotions, and political decision-making at scale. The term is credited to Michał Klincewicz, an assistant professor in the Department of Computational Cognitive Science at Tilburg University, in 2025.
Slopaganda is distinguished from traditional propaganda by three features: scale, scope, and speed. Generative AI makes it possible to produce large volumes of content quickly and at low cost, allows for highly personalised and targeted messaging to specific sub-audiences, and leverages the hyper-connectivity of social networks to accelerate dissemination beyond what conventional media could achieve.
Slopaganda can be micro-targeted — tailored to individuals based on estimated prior beliefs to reinforce political biases or emotional associations. The authors note that it need not aim at literal deception: much slopaganda is expressive rather than truth-apt, designed to create emotional associations rather than false factual beliefs.
Slopaganda is a subset of "AI slop" — low-quality, mass-produced AI-generated content — distinguished by intent. Where AI slop may be produced indifferently for commercial or engagement-farming purposes, slopaganda is deployed with a deliberate political or ideological goal.
Examples discussed by the term's originators include Donald Trump's prolific use of AI in Truth Social posts and Iranian Lego-themed music videos. AI-generated videos posted by the White House mixing real military footage with clips from films and video games and deepfake audio imitating political candidates during the 2024 US presidential campaign have also been given the label slopaganda.
Slopaganda has also been documented outside the US-Iran context. In April 2026, Canada's Media Ecosystem Observatory identified a network of YouTube channels, based outside Canada, producing large volumes of fabricated polls and coordinated AI-generated messages supporting an Alberta separatist referendum question. In Poland, a TikTok network known as "Prawilne Polki" used AI-generated avatars of young women in patriotic dress to promote messaging calling for Poland to leave the European Union.
| |
