{"id":34029,"date":"2026-05-22T08:18:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T13:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tsl.texas.gov\/ld\/librarydevelopments\/?p=34029"},"modified":"2026-05-22T08:18:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T13:18:46","slug":"lets-talk-about-ai-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tsl.texas.gov\/ld\/librarydevelopments\/2026\/05\/22\/lets-talk-about-ai-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Information Literacy in the Age of AI Slop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Merriam-Webster\u2019s 2025 word of the year was slop<\/em>, as in AI slop, and it\u2019s easy to see why. Increasingly, AI has seeped into everything, our phones, our work, our entertainment, and it\u2019s not all good. Merriam-Webster defines AI slop as \u201cdigital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,\u201d usually with little care for accuracy, context, or truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The editors go on to say, \u201cLike slime, sludge, <\/em>and muck, slop<\/em> has the wet sound of something you don\u2019t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything.\u201d The word evolved from meaning soft mud in the 1700s to food waste in the 1800s, and now captures our frustration of finding AI content flooding the internet. When you have AI flooding everything, anything of value will get lost in the mess of AI slop making it more difficult to know what to trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Detection to Discernment<\/strong>
<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Recently, a friend showed me a video, one of those clips that makes you stop scrolling. After watching it, I told her, \u201cThat\u2019s AI.\u201d She paused, then replied in genuine frustration:\u00a0 \u201cOMG Elsa, why can I not tell the difference??\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever wondered the same thing, you\u2019re not alone, and you\u2019re not failing at digital literacy. AI-generated content today doesn\u2019t need to be flawless to be effective. It just needs to be convincing enough, fast enough, and emotionally engaging enough to slip past our usual filters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it\u2019s time we shift from asking \u201cIs this AI\u201d to \u201cCan I trust this, and how can I verify it?\u201d especially for health information, safety, policies, and news reports. I find that the best approach is good ol\u2019 information literacy. My go-to is this three-step approach:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Three<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This strategy is simple enough to remember and it generally works well when assessing AI content. The same traditional approaches we\u2019ve always used to evaluate information still apply keeping in mind how AI-generated content differs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Practical Starting Point<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In my previous post, I introduced AI as a tool that\u2019s already woven into our daily lives. AI isn\u2019t just something happening behind the scenes, and whether we realize it or not, most of us are already encountering this kind of content daily. It\u2019s showing up in the videos we share, the images we react to, the headlines we scroll past, and the content we trust. Law firms are using AI to draft documents and legal briefings, news stories are being generated by pink slime journalism<\/a> (a term<\/a> borrowed from the food industry to refer to low quality partisan content), and the U.S. Department of Transportation<\/a> will begin using AI tools to draft safety regulations. The reality is that we are all either using or consuming AI in one way or another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As tech companies push AI products into more aspects of our lives, more people are becoming curious and are choosing to use these tools in both their personal and work life, for all the reasons I covered in my last post<\/a>. As librarians, it\u2019s important to stay informed so we can responsibly guide and educate patrons who are already using AI or are curious about it.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So where do we start? With the same critical thinking we\u2019ve always used, just applied to new tools. When considering adopting an AI tool, there are important questions we should ask, and teach our patrons to ask: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Privacy and Data Security<\/p>\n\n\n\n