It certainly feels like the amount of regurgitated, nonsensical, generated content (nontent?) has risen spectacularly specifically in the past few years. 2021 sounds about right based on just my own experience, even though I can't point to any objective source backing that up.
I do hope it catches on! I did come up with this myself, but I really doubt I'm the only one — and indeed: Wiktionary lists it already with a 2023 vintage:
I'm seeing it a lot when searching for some advice in a well-defined subject, like, say, leatherworking or sewing (or recipes, obviously). Instead of finding forums with hobbyists, in-depth blog posts, or manufacturers advice pages, increasingly I find articles which seem like natural language at first, but are composed of paragraphs and headers repeating platitudes and basic tips. It takes a few seconds to realize the site is just pushing generated articles.
Increasingly I find that for in-depth explanations or tutorials Youtube is the only place to go, but even there the search results can lead to loads of videos which just seem… off. But at least those are still made by humans.
There's been a ton of low-rent listicle writing out there for ages. Certainly not new in the past few years. I admit I don't go on YouTube much and don't even have a tiktok account so it's possible there's a lot of newer lousy content I'm not really exposed to.
It seems to me that the fact it's so cheap and relatively easy for people with dreams of becoming wealthy influencers to put stuff out there has more to do with the flood of often mediocre content than AI does.
Of course the vast majority don't have much real success and get on with life and the crank turns and a new generation perpetuates the cycle.
LLMs etc. may make things marginally easier but there's no shortage of twenty somethings with lots of time imagining riches while making pennies.
Looking forward to watch perfect generated videos. We need so much more power and chips but it’s completely worth it. After that? Maybe generated videogames. But the video stuff will be awesome and changing the video dominated social media content for ever. Virtual headsets will become useful finally generating anything you want to see and jump tru space and time.
SEO grifters have fully integrated AI at this point, there are dozens of turn-key "solutions" for mass-producing "content" with the absolute minimum effort possible. It's been refined to the point that scraping material from other sites, running it through the LLM blender to make it look original, and publishing it on a platform like Wordpress is fully automated end-to-end.
Upvoted for "nontent" alone: it'll be my go-to term from now on, and I hope it catches on.
Is it of your own coinage? When the AI sifts through the digital wreckage of the brief human empire, they may give you the credit.