YouTube新用户推荐视频超20%是“AI垃圾”

今天你练听力了吗？

🤔️小作业：

1. What is the primary purpose of presenting both the survey of 15,000 channels and the experiment with a newly created YouTube account?

A. To demonstrate inconsistencies between academic research and real-world data

B. To show that AI-generated content is mainly produced by top-ranked creators

C. To reinforce the claim that AI slop is structurally embedded in recommendation systems

D. To compare viewer behavior across different geographical regions

无注释原文：

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop', study finds

From: The Guardian

More than 20% of the videos that YouTube's algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.

The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world's most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.

Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.

The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop. One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention.

The findings are a snapshot of a rapidly expanding industry that is saturating big social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualised, addictive and international.

A Guardian analysis this year found that nearly 10% of YouTube's fastest-growing channels were AI slop, racking up millions of views despite the platform's efforts to curb “inauthentic content”.

The channels found by Kapwing are globally distributed and globally watched. They have millions of subscribers: in Spain, 20 million people, or nearly half the country's population, follow the trending AI channels. AI channels have 18 million followers in Egypt, 14.5 million in the US, and 13.5 million in Brazil.

Bandar Apna Dost, the most-viewed channel in the study, is based in India and now has 2.4bn views. It features the adventures of an anthropomorphic rhesus monkey and a muscular character modelled off the Incredible Hulk who fights demons and travels on a helicopter made of tomatoes. Kapwing estimated that the channel could make as much as $4.25m. Its owner did not respond to a query from the Guardian.

Rohini Lakshané, a researcher on technology and digital rights, said Bandar Apna Dost's popularity most likely stems from its absurdity, its hyper-masculine tropes and the fact that it lacks a plot, which makes it accessible to new viewers.

Pouty Frenchie, based in Singapore, has 2bn views and appears to target children. It chronicles the adventures of a French bulldog – driving to a candy forest, eating crystal sushi – many of them set to a soundtrack of children's laughter. Kapwing estimates it makes nearly $4m a year. Cuentos Facinantes, based in the US, also appears to target children with cartoon storylines, and has 6.65 million subscribers – making it the most-subscribed channel in the study.

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注：完整题目见本文开头；中文文本为机器翻译并非一一对应，仅供参考

含注释全文：

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop', study finds

From: The Guardian

More than 20% of the videos that YouTube's algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.

研究发现，YouTube算法向新用户推荐的视频中，超过20%是所谓的“AI垃圾内容（AI slop）”，即为博取点击量而生成的低质量人工智能内容。

algorithm /ˈælɡəˌrɪðəm/ 表示“算法；计算程序”，英文解释为“a set of rules that must be followed when solving a particular problem”

韦氏词典2025年度词汇：Slop。slop /slɒp/ 表示“稀软味差的食物；（尤指喂食动物的）泔水，剩饭菜”，英文解释为“food that is more liquid than it should be and is therefore unpleasant”如：Have you tried the slop that they call stew in the canteen? 你尝了食堂里他们称作炖菜的那个软塌塌的东西了吗?

“AI slop”用来形容那些由人工智能（特别是生成式AI）大规模、低成本、快速生产出来的，质量低下、内容空洞、缺乏灵魂的信息、图像、视频或文字作品。可以把它理解为“AI垃圾”或“AI泔水”。

作动词，slop /slɒp/ 表示“（使液体）晃荡；（使）溢出，溅出”，英文解释为“to cause a liquid to flow over the edge of a container through not taking care or making a rough movement”举个🌰：Careful, you've just slopped coffee all over the carpet! 小心，你刚才把咖啡溅得地毯上到处都是！

farm在这里作动词，本意是“耕种、农场”，在网络俚语中（尤其是游戏和网络内容领域），它常被用作动词，表示“通过重复性行为来大量获取某种资源”，比如在游戏中“farm经验值/金币”。farm views可以理解为“刷取/获取/赚取浏览量”。

The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world's most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.

视频剪辑公司卡普温（Kapwing）调查了全球最受欢迎的1.5万个YouTube频道（每个国家排名前100的频道），发现其中有278个频道几乎全部由AI垃圾内容构成。

channel /ˈtʃæn.əl/ 大家应该都比较熟悉，表示“渠道，方式，方法”，此处表示“频道”，可以指“电视频道，电视台”，如：to change/switch channels 换台； Youtube中注册了账号就相当于开设了个人频道，也可以开设多个频道。A personal YouTube channel is available to everyone who joins YouTube as a member. The channel serves as the home page for the user's account, and you can have more than one YouTube channel. 所以看Youtube视频时，你可能会经常听到视频末尾中说到，Please subscribe to my channel. 请订阅我的频道，就是我们所谓的关注（follow）我的频道，“关注我”的意思。

📍subscribe表示“订购，订阅”，英文解释为“to pay an amount of money regularly in order to receive or use sth”举个🌰：We subscribe to several sports channels. 我们付费收看好几个体育频道。

📍再补充一下，微信里的“视频号”，你猜微信官方将它译为什么了？

没错，把微信设置为英文版后你会发现，视频号那里变成了“Channels”。所以上面提到的抖音、快手等短视频的账号都可以叫channel。

Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.

据估算，这些AI垃圾内容频道合计已获得超过630亿次观看和2.21亿订阅者，每年可产生约1.17亿美元（约合9000万英镑）的收入。

amass /əˈmæs/ 表示“集聚，积累，大量收集（尤指钱或信息）”，英文解释为“to get a large amount of something, especially money or information, by collecting it over a long period”举个🌰：She has amassed a huge fortune from her novels. 她靠写小说慢慢积攒了一大笔钱。

近义词：

📍accumulate：to gradually get more and more of sth over a period of time 积累；积聚；

📍rack up表示“大量获得（利润）；严重遭受（损失）；（体育中）多次赢得（比赛）”（If a business racks up profits, losses, or sales, it makes a lot of them. If a sportsman, sportswoman, or team racks up wins, they win a lot of games or races.）

表示“订购者，订阅人；用户；定期捐款者”，英文解释为“someone who subscribes to a product, service, or organization”举个🌰：Cable television companies have launched major campaigns to increase their number of subscribers. 有线电视公司已开展大型促销活动以增加用户数。

The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop. One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention.

研究人员还新注册了一个YouTube账号，发现推荐列表中的前500个视频里，有104个是AI垃圾内容。其中三分之一属于“脑腐内容（brainrot）”，既包括AI垃圾内容，也包括其他旨在通过“注意力变现”获利的低质量内容。

feed作动词，表示“供给；供应；（尤指规律地或连续地）把…放进（机器或系统）”，英文解释为“to supply something to a person or thing, or put something into a machine or system, especially in a regular or continuous way”举个🌰：The vegetables are fed into the machine at this end. 蔬菜从这头放进机器里。

feed一词，作名词时，不知道你有没有听过“Feed流”或者“信息流”这样的说法，熟悉互联网行业的人可能会比较了解，指的就是持续向用户提供内容更新的信息流服务，比如朋友圈（Moments），微博，抖音的形式，你可以以时间线或者兴趣度一条一条地往下刷或者说阅读。可以看下Web feed或者News feed的英文解释：a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content.

📍《经济学人》（The Economist）一篇讲述战斗机AI飞行员的文章中提到：Ms Broadbent's team is also experimenting with novel ways to deliver information to a pilot, from a Twitter-like feed to an anthropomorphic avatar. 布罗德本特的团队也在测试用推特式消息流、拟人化形象等各种新鲜方式向飞行员发送信息。

2024牛津年度词汇：Brain rot，Brain rot指一个人精神或智力状态的恶化或退化，特指由于过度浏览那些无聊或低质量的内容（尤指现在的网络内容）而出现的状态。

英式 monetise 美式 monetize /ˈmʌn.ɪ.taɪz/ 1）表示“转化为货币；以货币方式表达”，英文解释为“to change something into money, or to express something in terms of money or a currency”举个🌰：Japan is monetizing several trillion dollars of government debt. 日本正把几万亿的政府债务货币化。

2）表示“从…赚钱”，英文解释为“to make money from something”举个🌰：The problem was how to monetize this kind of social networking site. 问题是如何从这样的社交媒体网站上赚钱。

The findings are a snapshot of a rapidly expanding industry that is saturating big social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualised, addictive and international.

这些发现勾勒出一个正在迅速膨胀的产业缩影，它正充斥着从X到Meta再到YouTube等大型社交平台，并塑造出一种新的内容时代：脱离语境、容易上瘾、跨越国界。

snapshot /ˈsnæp.ʃɒt/ 1）表示“照片，快照”，英文解释为“a photograph”

2）表示“简介；简要情况”，英文解释为“a piece of information or short description that gives an understanding of a situation at a particular time”举个🌰：Credit rating agencies provide a snapshot of the risks an investment poses at any one time. 信用评分机构提供的是某一时刻投资风险的简要情况。

此处snapshot是一个比喻用法，意思是“快照”、“瞬间的景象”或“一个时间点的缩影”。snapshot原指用相机快速拍下的照片，捕捉某个瞬间的景象。在这里，它被用来比喻考古地层。每一个地层（layer）都像一个“时间快照”，封存并记录了它形成时期的工具、环境和生活景象。

saturate /ˈsætʃʊreɪt/ 表示“使饱和；使充满”，英文解释为“If people or things saturate a place or object, they fill it completely so that no more can be added.”举个🌰：In the last days before the vote, both sides are saturating the airwaves. 在投票前的最后几天，双方的宣传充斥着各个广播频道。

表示“非语境化，去情景化”，英文解释为“shown or considered without a context (= a sentence, a text, a situation, etc. that something is part of, that gives it a particular meaning)”举个🌰：In this exhibition, the photographs he took are deliberately decontextualised. 在这次展览中，他拍摄的照片特意脱离语境。

A Guardian analysis this year found that nearly 10% of YouTube's fastest-growing channels were AI slop, racking up millions of views despite the platform's efforts to curb “inauthentic content”.

《卫报》（The Guardian）今年的一项分析发现，YouTube增长最快的频道中，近10%属于AI垃圾内容，尽管平台声称正在限制“非真实内容”，这些频道仍获得了数百万次观看。

表示“积累，大量获得（利润）；严重遭受（损失）；（体育中）多次赢得（比赛）”，英文解释为“If a business racks up profits, losses, or sales, it makes a lot of them. If a sportsman, sportswoman, or team racks up wins, they win a lot of games or races.”举个🌰：Lower rates mean that firms are more likely to rack up profits in the coming months. 更低的费率意味着各公司更有可能在未来的几个月里获得大量利润。

可以作动词，也可以作名词，表示“控制，抑制，限定，约束（不好的事物）”，英文解释为“to control or limit sth, especially sth bad”举个🌰：A range of policies have been introduced aimed at curbing inflation. 为了抑制通货膨胀实施了一系列的政策。（名词）He called for much stricter curbs on immigration. 他呼吁对移民实行更为严格的限制。

inauthentic /ɪn.ɔːˈθen.tɪk/ 表示“假的，名不副实的；不可信的；不可靠的”，英文解释为“If something is inauthentic, it is not real, true, or what people say it is.”举个🌰：He criticized the restaurant's inauthentic food. 他批评这家餐馆的食物名不副实。

The channels found by Kapwing are globally distributed and globally watched. They have millions of subscribers: in Spain, 20 million people, or nearly half the country's population, follow the trending AI channels. AI channels have 18 million followers in Egypt, 14.5 million in the US, and 13.5 million in Brazil.

卡普温发现的这些频道遍布全球，也被全球用户观看，订阅量动辄以百万计：在西班牙，有2000万人——几乎占全国人口一半——关注热门AI频道；在埃及为1800万，美国1450万，巴西1350万。

Bandar Apna Dost, the most-viewed channel in the study, is based in India and now has 2.4bn views. It features the adventures of an anthropomorphic rhesus monkey and a muscular character modelled off the Incredible Hulk who fights demons and travels on a helicopter made of tomatoes. Kapwing estimated that the channel could make as much as $4.25m. Its owner did not respond to a query from the Guardian.

研究中观看量最高的频道“班达尔·阿普纳·多斯特”（Bandar Apna Dost）位于印度，目前已有24亿次观看。频道内容包括一只拟人化的恒河猴，以及一个模仿“绿巨人”（Incredible Hulk）的肌肉角色，他们打怪、旅行，甚至乘坐由番茄组成的直升机。卡普温估计，该频道年收入最高可达425万美元。其所有者未回应《卫报》的采访请求。

anthropomorphic /ˌæn.θrə.pəˈmɔː.fɪk/ 表示“拟人化的；人格化的”，英文解释为“treating animals, gods, or objects as if they are human in appearance, character, and behaviour”举个🌰：His drawings of birds are vaguely anthropomorphic. 他画的鸟有点拟人化的风格。

rhesus monkey /ˈriː.səsˌmʌŋ.ki/ 表示“（产于印度北部的）恒河猴”，英文解释为“a monkey from northern India”

muscular /ˈmʌskjʊlə/ 表示“肌肉发达的；强壮的”，英文解释为“having large strong muscles”，如：肌肉损伤 muscular injuries。

区分：

📍molecular /məʊˈlɛkjʊlə/ 表示“分子的”，英文解释为“Molecular means relating to or involving molecules.”，如：the molecular structure of fuel 燃料的分子结构。

Rohini Lakshané, a researcher on technology and digital rights, said Bandar Apna Dost's popularity most likely stems from its absurdity, its hyper-masculine tropes and the fact that it lacks a plot, which makes it accessible to new viewers.

科技与数字权利研究者罗希尼·拉克沙内（Rohini Lakshané）表示，“班达尔·阿普纳·多斯特”的走红，很可能源于其荒诞性、过度男性化的套路，以及缺乏明确剧情，这反而让新观众可以随时进入观看。

stem from sth 表示“源自；由…造成”，英文解释为“to start or develop as the result of something”举个🌰：Her problems stem from her difficult childhood. 她的问题主要是由艰难的童年生活造成的。

absurdity /əbˈzɜː.dɪ.ti/ 表示“荒谬，荒唐；愚蠢；可笑”，英文解释为“the quality of being stupid and unreasonable, or silly in a humorous way”举个🌰：We laughed about the absurdity of the idea. 我们因这个想法的荒谬而忍俊不禁。

Pouty Frenchie, based in Singapore, has 2bn views and appears to target children. It chronicles the adventures of a French bulldog – driving to a candy forest, eating crystal sushi – many of them set to a soundtrack of children's laughter. Kapwing estimates it makes nearly $4m a year. Cuentos Facinantes, based in the US, also appears to target children with cartoon storylines, and has 6.65 million subscribers – making it the most-subscribed channel in the study.

总部位于新加坡的“噘嘴法斗”（Pouty Frenchie）频道拥有20亿次观看量，似乎以儿童为主要受众，内容记录一只法国斗牛犬的冒险经历，例如开车去糖果森林、吃水晶寿司，背景音常配以儿童笑声。卡普温估计其年收入接近400万美元。总部在美国的“迷人故事”（Cuentos Facinantes）频道同样疑似面向儿童，采用卡通化叙事，订阅量达665万，是此次研究中订阅数最高的频道。

chronicle /ˈkrɒnɪkəl/ 1）作名词，表示“编年史；年代记；大事记”，英文解释为“a written record of historical events”

2）作动词，表示“记述，记录（大事）；把…载入编年史；按发生时间顺序编写或播放”，英文解释为“To chronicle a series of events means to write about them or show them in broadcasts in the order in which they happened.”举个🌰：The series chronicles the everyday adventures of a girl. 这部丛书按时间顺序记载了一位女生每天的奇遇。

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