The AI Slop Loop: When Misinformation Writes Itself

Ray's experiment exposes something the misinformation debate has largely avoided naming directly: the problem is not bad actors seeding false content, it is the retrieval infrastructure treating AI-generated fabrications as equivalent to primary sources. The fabricated Google update she documented entered the pipeline as a coherent, citation-structured piece of content — exactly what retrieval systems are built to surface. The fabrication spread to Google AI Overviews and Perplexity within 24 hours, not because anyone promoted it, but because it matched the signals that automated retrieval rewards.