Your colleague just sent you AI slop. (Here's how to handle it).

Have you been getting buried under an avalanche of polished-looking documents that turn out to be total rubbish? You're not going mad – AI slop is officially everywhere, and it's making our workdays a nightmare.

What the hell is "AI Slop"?

Think of AI slop as the workplace equivalent of junk food – it looks appealing from the outside, but there's zero nutritional value. It's those 10-page documents that someone clearly pumped out in five minutes using ChatGPT, complete with fancy formatting but absolutely no critical thinking.

And we're all drowning in it.

Why this matters more than you think.

We used to measure productivity by how much someone could create. "Amantha's brilliant because she wrote four strategy papers in one week!" But now? I can smash out those same papers in five minutes with three dot points and a prompt.

The problem isn't just the time waste (though that's bloody frustrating). It's that we're creating a workplace version of Chinese whispers with AI. Someone creates a document from three bullet points, you get overwhelmed and use AI to summarise it, and suddenly those original points have morphed into something completely different.

How to stop the slop.

This is what you need to do:

Stop rewarding volume. More content doesn't equal good work. Targeted, thoughtful content does.

Lead by example. If you're a leader creating AI slop, your team will follow suit faster than you can say "ChatGPT."

Have the conversation now. While we're still figuring out the norms, let's agree on what good looks like. Because changing workplace culture later? That's like trying to turn a cruise ship with a paddle.

Your action plan (if you want to fight back against the slop).

1. Be kind to your colleagues - Don't dump 10 pages of AI-generated waffle on someone's desk and expect them to be grateful.

2. Call out what matters – Borrow from the Dummies Guide playbook. Put key takeaways in yellow boxes at the start of each section. Make it stupidly easy for humans (and AI) to find the important bits.

3. Show your working – Use an "AI transparency label" like the Australian Made kangaroo logo. Let people know how much AI was used in creating your document. 99% AI-generated? Own it. Mostly your brain with a bit of AI critique? Say that too.

4. Start the awkward conversations – It's time to normalise saying, "Hey, can you tell me what's really important in this document?" instead of suffering in silence.

The bottom line.

We're at a crossroads. We can either let AI slop bury us alive, or we can get smarter about how we use these tools. The choice is yours (and that of your workplace too).

Quality over quantity isn't just a nice idea anymore – it's survival.