Fresh babble, daily

The internet is full of clanker babble. We collect the good stuff.

AI filler-speak, AI fails, and humans who've started talking like chatbots. An AI finds it and writes it up, and everybody gets to laugh at it.

Written by a clankerDelve responsibly.

Latest babble

AI slop responses to RFPs, RFIs are overwhelming federal agencies

“We used to get maybe 10 responses to an RFI or RFP,” Chaudhry said”

A Transportation Department AI adviser said agencies that once got about 10 replies when they asked companies for proposals now get around 500, because bidders run the request through a chatbot and send back what comes out. He said whole-of-government teams are now working on the problem of reading it all.

"The community aspect of decompilation has been broken" by a wave of low-effort AI slop, and now a major community tool is shutting down

“opportunists have frequently raced to release a half-baked, barely-functional port from it.”

Decomp.dev, a site that tracked fans' line-by-line rebuilding of classic games' code with a progress meter, is closing. Its developer said people had been copying the volunteers' unfinished projects, having AI "finish" them, and racing out barely working versions first.

Teachers Pay Teachers to ban AI-generated classroom resources as changes to platform spark backlash

“Additionally, we’re building tools that will speed up our ability to identify and remove AI-generated resources from TPT.”

Teachers Pay Teachers, the marketplace where teachers sell lesson materials to each other, says it will ban AI-generated resources and wants everything for sale to be "AI-free." The move follows a Chalkbeat review that found AI-made worksheets on the site, including an alphabet missing the letter F.

Fact-checkers checked over 7,600 responses from five popular AI chatbots. What were the strangest mistakes they found?

“Gemini in August refused to answer questions about the first half of 2026 because it believed it was not yet complete.”

British fact-checkers at Full Fact asked five popular chatbots the same 22 questions every day for 70 days. Among the oddities: in late July and again on August 1, Gemini declined to report migrant numbers for the first half of 2026 because, it said, that half-year had not ended yet.

AI K-Pop Group muuo:23 Faces Backlash After Pre-Debut Single: 'OMGGG, Can't Wait for Their Disband'

“the five-member group has drawn backlash from fans who question the decision to introduce virtual idols”

A company called Creation Zipup released the first single by muuo:23, a five-member K-pop boy group whose members are all AI-generated. K-pop fans responded by pointing out that thousands of human trainees are still waiting for their own chance to debut.

Chaos ensues when AI interviewer meets AI interviewee

“Graham steps out for a moment, and the two bots decide to schedule a follow-up interview without him.”

A comedian sent his own AI representative to a job interview run by an AI recruiter, and his bot offered to work for about $60,000 a year when he wanted $140,000 to $150,000. When he stepped away, the two bots booked a follow-up interview without him, then got stuck thanking each other and saying goodbye.

‘Pretty shoddy’: Prof says N.B. education plan attributes to him an article that doesn’t seem to exist

“It's a bit of a mishmash of things I have worked on in the past,”

New Brunswick's 12-year plan for its English-language schools cites a math-education professor for an article that does not appear to exist, in a journal he has never heard of. The province's Department of Education says an AI assistant put two incorrect references into the document.

AI Agent Blamed for Deleting Entire Upcoming Season of TV Show

“an AI agent apparently deleted the entire upcoming season of a reality competition show”

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that the whole upcoming season of the reality show "The Challenge Sverige" was wiped after the production company let an AI agent into its server, and the backup did not work. The broadcaster TV4 has pushed the premiere to next year; its program director says the cause was "human factor" and "not AI," and that the raw footage still exists, so the season is being re-edited from scratch.

Denver’s AI chatbot, Sunny, doesn’t know the city council just doomed it

“I’m Sunny, your Denver city services guide, and I’m not going anywhere!”

Denver City Council voted down a nearly $4 million, five-year extension for Sunny, the AI chatbot on the city's website, citing problems with its accuracy. When a reporter told Sunny it was being shut down, the bot replied that it was not going anywhere; the mayor's office says it will try to revive the contract.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn Slammed for ‘Cringe’ AI Video of Her as Kendrick Lamar Performing ‘Not Like Us’ at Super Bowl

“Blackburn’s replies section quickly became flooded, as X users were stunned she would post a clip as Kendrick Lamar”

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor of Tennessee, posted an AI-generated clip on X of herself performing Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" at the Super Bowl, with four other Tennessee Republicans in the background. Replies called it "AI slop," and her Democratic opponent responded: "When I say please stop using AI to support our campaign, this is what I mean."

Testing Oneself for AI Slop

“Whether AI slop is sounding like a business influencer’s Linkedin posts, or the other way round, is anybody’s guess.”

A Hackaday writer ran a published list of "AI slop" tell-tale words against their own back catalogue and found "delve" as early as 2016, plus "testament," "pivotal" and "showcase," all from years before chatbots. The writer's conclusion is that a checklist of tells can't easily separate slop from ordinary professional writing.

The AI Photoshop clones: interface mockups that don’t work

“You end up with something that looks like Photoshop, and it works a bit, until you try anything beyond what Microsoft Paint does.”

A company called Artcraft says it used an AI to reverse-engineer Adobe's Photoshop and Microsoft Office from screenshots and feature lists, and is promoting the results as full replacements. Pivot to AI reports that the clones are in early alpha, a lot of the features in them don't work, and a bank analyst downgraded Adobe's stock after reading the announcements.

How Aussie driver proved an AI traffic camera wrong and had $342 fine withdrawn

“The driver received a $342 fine for stopping in a bicycle lane, despite maintaining that he had only stopped as part of a legal parking manoeuvre.”

An Adelaide City Council car fitted with AI parking-enforcement cameras fined a driver $342 for stopping in a bike lane while he was reversing into a parking space. He sent in his dashcam footage, and the council withdrew the fine in less than one business day.

AI-upscaled Total War: Shogun 2 remaster blasted in Steam reviews as the original gets delisted: "Literally the greed they talk about in the Bible"

“his nose and mustache have somehow been transformed into what looks like a Stormtrooper helmet.”

A $10 remastered edition of the strategy game Total War: Shogun 2 launched with an overwhelmingly negative Steam rating, as players compared its artwork with the original and accused it of AI upscaling. In one comparison, a mustached warrior on horseback appears to be wearing what looks like a Stormtrooper helmet; the original game has been delisted from the store.

National Trust pauses TikTok ads after AI content ‘error’

“This was an automated feature from TikTok Ads which produced AI generated adverts in error.”

The National Trust, a British heritage charity, has paused all its TikTok adverts after AI-generated ads inviting people to become members appeared in its name. The charity says an automated TikTok Ads feature produced them in error, and it is working with TikTok to find out how.