'AI;DR': If writers don't want to write it, why would you want to read it?

A.I. slop is ubiquitous and everywhere. Anytime you try to read something, from a restaurant review to a social media comment to a blog post, there's a good chance it was written using A.I. Many would argue that if someone didn't care enough to write something, why should anyone care enough to read it?

Along comes a new term just in time to help everyone online sort this all out: "AI;DR," meaning "artificial intelligence: didn't read." Similar to the abbreviation of just a few years ago, "TL;DR," or "too long: didn't read," this new handy term can alert others to A.I. slop before they fall into the trap of reading it, Futurism notes.

While the term was coined previously, it's gaining traction now because of just how much A.I. content is out there. Any unwitting reader could end up reading something that the person who called for it to be composed in the first place didn't even read. There's no reason to believe it was fact-checked or has any veracity whatsoever. 

A recent case in Australia highlights the point. A woman was convicted of arson—she set her rental home on fire intentionally, then escaped through a broken window before coming back for her weed and some pants—and was sentenced to, among other things, penning letters of remorse.

She wrote the letters using A.I., and now the judge in the case has to decide if that qualifies as completing that portion of the sentence of if she actually felt any remorse at all.

A.I. is also prone to lies, or hallucinations, as they're called. After Second Lady Usha Vance became pregnant, Google's "AI mode" claimed she was the very first second lady to ever become pregnant while her husband was in office. A closer look at actual historical records showed that this was false.

A freelance writer who was hired to write book reviews of summer reading fed the task to an A.I., which then made up books by real authors. The freelancer passed it to an editor, without fact-checking, who, in turn, did not fact-check before the reviews of fake books were published.

The writer didn't want to read it, the editor didn't want to read it, so why should any reader want to read it? AI;DR.

From medical advice to political analysis to recipes, A.I. writing is everywhere and it behooves readers to be able to tell the real writing from the slop. At least with A.I. recipes, a seasoned cook can look at a recipe that includes white vinegar as a chocolate chip cookie ingredient and know it's b.s., but what about things that are not so obvious? 

In the early days of the internet, people had to watch out for WebMD, which famously attributed every symptom to cancer. Now, we have poison sandwiches, made-up diseases, and fake facts masquerading as truth. For all this and more, AI;DR cannot come soon enough.