You sniped me. The internet seems to agree with you that the current usage of "slop" was popularized on 4chan in 2022, but it's been around way longer. I've always known slop as the food scraps served to pigs.

It’s kind of the same usage.

Calling something “AI slop” is describing it like food scraps for pigs. Cheap, distasteful, mass produced.

Also backlash in motors and gears. Imprecise engineering.

I'm liking the word "slop" more and more!

As someone on Mastodon observed [1], it's also got all sorts of great resonances with words like "slime", "sleaze", "sludge", "slug", "slither", "slouch", etc. The word itself implies a distasteful, slippery (another sl- word!) nature.

[1]: https://transmom.love/@elilla/113578996568287769

Current youth culture is massively influenced by imageboard culture.