Substack’s Anti-Slop Plan Points to the Next Phase of the AI Boom

The global economy is increasingly hinging on the notion that AI will be inexorably intertwined with every part of our lives.

Also increasing: signs that consumers — or at least some consumers — don’t feel great about that, at all.

You can see that most clearly in the anti-data center backlash, which is picking up steam. Or when fans of A24, the hipster-ish film studio, heap scorn on the indie for daring to work with Google’s DeepMind AI lab.

But I think it’s just as telling when people you wouldn’t think would be worried about AI say they’re worried about AI. Or, at least, that they understand why you’re worried about AI.

That’s the gist of Tuesday’s announcement from Substack, the newsletter tool/aspiring social network: It says that AI slop is overwhelming the internet, and it wants to fight back.

For now, that effort amounts to giving Substack users access to a tool created by Pangram, an AI-detection startup. Down the line, the company says, it may introduce other features, like the ability for Substack readers to keep AI-generated content out of their feeds.

Substack CEO Chris Best takes pains to say Substack isn’t opposed to the use of AI in general or in the creation of Substack content:

We’re not against people using AI to assist their work, and we think people should be free to choose which tools they use to express themselves. Some on the platform are human-writing maximalists, others are publicly exploring the frontier of using AI tools while sweating the details to make work they stand behind. We use AI all the time at Substack to write software, do research, and build product features like clipping, translations, and more.

But common sense tells you that Substack wouldn’t be putting together an anti-AI plan if it wasn’t worried about AI. Or if it didn’t think its users were worried about AI.

The giveaway is when Best uses the dreaded “L”-word to describe what might happen if AI growth isn’t curtailed: “One thing we do know is that we don’t want to wait until your Substack app turns into LinkedIn before we start to learn and make progress.”

LinkedIn! How gross — at least in Best’s mind, or at least in the minds of the people Best imagines use Substack.

Except that 1) I’ve seen plenty of crummy Substack screeds, and sometimes I see a really insightful LinkedIn post. It’s a wide world of content out there. And 2) a couple months ago, LinkedIn said it was trying to fight AI slop, too.

I think there’s a pretty good debate to be had about much of this. Are people opposed to any use of AI in writing or any other kind of communication? How much is too much? Who decides how much of it I get to see? And honestly: If the SVP of widget production wants to use ChatGPT to write a boring post about widget workflow automation, who really cares?

But I don’t think there’s any debate that lots of real people have real anxiety about AI.

Tech leaders act befuddled about this. They shouldn’t.

They spent a couple of years telling us that AI was going to reorder the entire world — and very likely most people’s jobs — and that its progress was unstoppable. During that same time, many of them explicitly linked themselves to Donald Trump — a man who many, many people do not like. It would be weird if people weren’t freaked out about this.

I do agree with the tech POV that AI is unstoppable. Which is why I think all of this most likely nets out with a labeling regime.

In that world, the average person will spend a lot of time encountering AI, and probably won’t know or think much about it. And for some consumers, and some brands, an “AI-free” label will be a selling point, the same way a certain slice of our population pays a premium for organic food.

And for a bunch of us, it may be something we care about in differing amounts, in different times and contexts. I truly love an organic hot dog — and I also eat and buy a lot of super-gnarly junk food made who-knows-where using who-knows-what. You may be fine with AI in your LinkedIn, but hate it in your Spotify.

The tech industry may be right that AI is going to be inevitable. But “inevitable” is different from “accepted.” And there will be money and opportunity in giving people places where it isn’t.