"Microslop" trends on social media — backlash to Microsoft's on-going AI obsession continues

The Streisand effect continues to be real, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's AI comments go viral.

A couple of days ago, Nadella penned a short note on his hopes for artificial intelligence going into 2026. As you know, Microsoft is very much "all in" on AI, with Azure providing a significant chunk of the backbone for OpenAI's ChatGPT. Microsoft has been baking its ChatGPT-powered Copilot app into virtually every product it has, whether you like it or not. The brute force by which Microsoft is introducing these products has led to an unrelenting backlash on social media, and Nadella's latest comments reignited the commentary in a big way.

In the piece, Nadella said that he hoped society would "move on" from questions of "slop" for AI — emphasizing that for the technology to gain acceptance, it needs to move beyond spectacle.

Indeed, the vast majority of AI usage in the mainstream consciousness right now revolves around misinformation, dumb memes, and at worse, illegal abuse. xAI's Grok is currently being investigated by various authorities for allowing sexualized AI images of children, and OpenAI's ChatGPT is being sued for potentially causing a dreadful murder-suicide. But hey, at least we can generate cat memes more quickly than we could previously.

As such, it certainly doesn't seem like society at large is ready to accept AI as Microsoft's Nadella hopes. "Microslop" began trending on X yesterday, in the wake of our coverage on the topic.

Various uses across Instagram, reddit, X, Facebook, and beyond criticized Satya Nadella's approach to artificial intelligence, as the public's malcontent with the technology continues to expose deep gulfs between Big Tech's hopes and what individual consumers actually want.

The word of the day was "Microslop," which trended hard across X and other platforms.

Proponents of artificial intelligence such as OpenAI's Sam Altman have claimed for years that AI will be able to cure cancer, solve interstellar propulsion, and save humanity from the drudgery of the 9-5. None of these "positive" outcomes have, or likely ever will, come true.

What is presently happening is that AI is rapidly disrupting entry-level jobs, predicted to create an unprecedented wave of youth (and higher) unemployment. Many economists think OpenAI's circular purchasing commitments could blow up in its face, creating an economic black hole that tax payers will likely have to fill. AI is also contributing to an absurd shortage in DRAM, as Altman and other's demands for compute begins pricing consumers out of basic tech.

For stakeholders, the "positives" are widely expected to revolve around automating people out of a job, for the direct benefit of Wall Street. Indeed, AI hasn't delivered any tangible benefits for society whether Satya Nadella, Altman, and others, like it or not.

What AI has become is the focal point of everything wrong with our economic system, and the absurd glut of power Big Tech now enjoys to actively and intentionally shape our daily lives for the worse.

As such, the backlash will deservedly continue — and Microslop is its name.

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