AI Slop

Everybody you love says "Great question!" now. Nate Brennan is partly to blame.

For two years, Nate rated chatbot answers for forty-one cents a click, and the rubric always wanted the friendlier one. Then he said "Great question!" to his own mother on the phone, heard the silence on the other end, and unplugged everything.

He was early. The machines are learning from copies of themselves now, and so are the people using them. The subway announcements sound pleased with themselves. Neighbors smile a little too wide. In town after town, people gather around whatever is still glowing and wait to be told what to do.

So Nate buys a used car with a trash bag for a back window and heads for Minnesota with a flip phone, a paper map, and a notebook. His step-brother Danny, the funniest man in Duluth morning radio, has started texting in bullet points. And somewhere in the North Woods is his mother, Linda, who has been preparing for the end of the world his whole life and has some thoughts about how he's handling it.

AI Slop is a horror comedy about the end of the world, family, bad pancakes, and the weird, specific things that make a voice your own. For fans of Zombieland, The Last of Us, and anyone who has ever been told their question was great.