Slop Evader
A search tool and browser extension to avoid AI slop
Slop Evader
Initiator(s)
Tega Brain
Description
In the years following the emergence of large language models, the internet has seen a dramatic increase in automatically generated text, images, and video, much of it produced to optimize search rankings, drive clicks, and capture attention. As the internet fills with synthetic content, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between media documenting the real world and media generated with machine learning. With every sloppy post, the internet’s function as a system for accessing knowledge is quietly eroded.
Slop Evader responds to this development by filtering web searches to include only content published before November 30, 2022—the date of ChatGPT’s first public release. Using the Google Search API*, the tool enables users to navigate a pre-generative-AI web across platforms such as Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and YouTube. By filtering search results according to this temporal threshold, Slop Evader proposes a small act of digital refusal, allowing users to temporarily step outside the expanding ecosystem of machine-generated media and rediscover traces of the human internet.
*Why use Google? Unfortunately, platform-based search tools rarely enable strict date-based filtering. Google is one of the few engines that does.
Goals
To explore ways to ensure content is human authored; To push back on narratives of technological progress/determinism; To enliven an imagination for AI refusal
Beneficial outcomes
The tool reduces the cognitive load of having to determine if content is AI generated
Location
United States of America
Users
The extension has 10,000 users on Chrome and approx 4700 users on Firefox
Maintained by
Tega Brain
Duration
2025 - 2026
Category
Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social
