An Elegant Solution to AI Slop: Tax It, and Use the Resulting Billions of Dollars to Fund Cultural Institutions, Artists, and Researchers

"The 'slop tax' would work as follows: if a company 'furnishes or hosts generative AI content,' it's hit with an annual ~1 percent tax. This revenue goes into a publicly controlled fund that distributes grants back to varying kinds to cultural institutions, artists and researchers - the very same groups the models used as training data."

"AI slop is more than just an ugly annoyance. In Pepi's view, it's a 'malicious manipulation of human cognitive labor and the institutions that support it.' These billions of 'facsimiles of human creativity and cognition' end up drawing resources away from actual human creatives."

"The largest AI companies are worth trillions of dollars each, so even a one percent tax will provide a windfall for cultural workers, bedrock cultural institutions, and grants for research, Pepi wrote."

A proposed 'slop tax' would impose a 1% tax on companies generating AI content, redistributing funds to support cultural institutions and artists. This tax aims to balance the exploitation of human creativity by AI, which detracts resources from actual creators. The revenue generated would be used to provide grants to those whose work contributed to AI training data. The tax is designed to be non-punitive, ensuring cooperation from AI companies while significantly benefiting cultural sectors.

Read at Futurism