The new Anti-AI Content Boom, after the AI Boom slows
After the AI Boom ended or at least slowed during 2026 (hopefully ended: because of the copyright infringement, scams, pollution and all the other problems), there is a huge increase of content critical of AI on many sites. With Generative AI growing more unpopular, posts and videos against it get more views, which means creators add and create more anti-AI content, and drive this new Anti-AI Boom or better known as the AI Backlash, including many criticisms for a variety of reasons.
No wonder if AI keeps producing slop content like the above diagram, which ignores 500 years of science and goes back to the pre-Copernicus view of the Earth at the centre of the Solar System! Except that there's now two planets called Uranus! And what happened to Mars and Mercury?
This diagram I found on Reddit, here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aimapgore/comments/1s0pysj/make_a_map_of_the_solar_system_chatgpt/
There are a few contenders for the exact moment that the AI Boom ended or slowed. I believe it will be marked by either the infamous booing of university graduate speakers that tried to promote AI in May;
NBC, 'Student commencement boos are a sign of wider AI woes'
or maybe the Force Majeure notice given for 'Project Jupiter.' Not the Jupiter shown in the AI generated map above as having a similar orbit as the Sun on its course around the Earth! Or the 'Jupitor' (sic) shown on the AI generated chart given to Kentucky school children that describes "Planetary distance are temporatory earth, equater the elenonts and regnestiom org toed dishligns (sic):"
Students given AI slop with misspelled state names, faulty table of elements, angering parents
Not the above Jupiter or 'Jupitor.' No, I mean the 'Project Jupiter' data centre in New Mexico worth $165 billion, whose developer was given a Force Majeure notice by Oracle in September. This unusual 'Force Majeure' law (which I had not heard of before) is used for natural disasters and other extreme circumstances:
Forbes, 'Oracle stock slides after company issued ‘force majeure’ notice for major data center project'
Many of these data centre projects have actions and protests against them. Across the U.S., there have been 935 local data centre moratoriums put in place, described here:
https://programs.com/resources/data-center-moratoriums-tracker/
While the change.org movement 'Fighting Data Center Development' has 176 separate petitions and 1.3 million supporters:
https://www.change.org/m/halting-data-center-development
The protests are having an impact, with a total of $260 billion of data centre cancellations so far this year:
Heatmap, 'Exclusive: Data Center Cancellations Top $260 Billion in 2026'
https://heatmap.news/daily/260-billion-data-center-opposition
*Another contender for the end of the AI Boom was when the launch of Australian AI company Firmus failed in October, planned to be worth $44 billion:
Data centre operator Firmus pulls blockbuster ASX float after lacklustre demand
*Or when neighbourhood protesters used their cars and garbage bins to block a data centre in Melbourne, which caused Nextdc's shares to fall 40% in one day (Oct 21):
ABC News, 'Why data centre giant NEXTDC's shares plunged'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrPm8c4-LyU
The change.org protest about this Melbourne data centre has 4,700+ signatures at the time of writing:
https://www.change.org/p/object-the-expansion-of-nextdc-data-centre-in-west-footscray
*Or another contender was the cancellation of 'Project Mars' - not the missing planet Mars from the AI generated solar system diagram - but the Sydney data centre proposal withdrawn on September 28 after community pressure such as this change.org petition:
Oppose the development of a new Data Centre at 12 Mars Rd Lane Cove
https://www.change.org/p/oppose-the-development-of-a-new-data-centre-at-12-mars-rd-lane-cove
*Perhaps another contender was when the AI company "Character.ai" went bankrupt (Oct 13), after never having made a profit, described here:
'Other AI Companies Should Be Very Afraid of What Just Happened to Character.AI, According to Its Own Bankruptcy Documents'
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-afraid-characterai-bankrupcy
It's sad if innocent investors get caught up in the AI bubble bursting. However the AI industry is built on copyright infringement, churns out slop, makes scams and deepfakes, and pollutes the environment.
The public are starting to realise AI is unprofitable, the AI industry has been running at nearly a $1 trillion loss, (shown at https://isaiprofitable.com/ ) has tiny revenue compared to its costs and faces huge debts, with little chance of a return on investment. Honestly I didn't realise all this either until a few months ago, when I saw the videos by Ed Zitron... in about August/September. (His site: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ ) When I wrote this petition in May/June, I presumed like I think many people did, that the AI industry was making a profit. At the time, I 'only' knew about AI's many other problems (copyright infringement, scams, harassment, deception, AI slop, data centre pollution etc.)
*Ed Zitron's latest monologue suggests that AI chip maker Nvidia is forcing other companies such as Amazon to buy their 'Graphics Processing Units' before they're needed, which then form unused stockpiles in warehouses, causing the rise in computer prices for everyday customers:
"The increased price of RAM and consumer electronics was a result of an artificial supply chain crisis created by Jensen Huang pushing Nvidia's customers to take early delivery of GPUs...
[then a powerful 2 minute expletive-laden tirade before:]
"What these people have done is morally reprehensible, on top of the already vast damage done by the very existence of Generative AI. This destructive, pointless void of an industry has made everything it touches worse."
Quoted from
Amazon Is Warehousing Billions In GPUs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzBUsbqbVkM (explicit language warning)
*The role of Nvidia in the AI industry was also investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, as described here:
U.S. DoJ launches Nvidia antitrust investigation — investigating potential strong-arm tactics related to AI GPU supply
***
Evidence for the Anti-AI Content Boom: it seems every time I do a basic search, there's a new petition against A.I. here at change.org, (searching for 'artificial intelligence' gets 1400+ results now, but searching for 'data center' gets over 4000!) or a new video at Youtube which finds more and more things wrong with the AI industry: there's just too many to list them all. But I'll try linking a few.
*A new petition against Gen AI from this month (started Oct 11th) which already has 19,000+ signatures:
Give Users Control: Let Us Turn Off AI-Generated Content
https://www.change.org/p/give-users-control-let-us-turn-off-ai-generated-content
*And a petition against an underwater data center in whale habitat has 33,000+ signatures after being here a little over a month:
Stop the Underwater Data Center Planned in Maine's Right Whale Waters
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-underwater-data-center-planned-in-maine-s-right-whale-waters
*Another petition moving up fast (started Sep 19th) is against Gen AI books on Amazon, with 6,000+ signatures:
Ban AI-generated "books" from Amazon's Kindle unlimited now! There is no space for AI!
*Anthropic's terrible 'Project Panama' book destruction sparked outrage across the world and several change.org petitions: so far I've found eight separate petitions against book destruction by AI companies, including Anthropic's appalling effort to "destructively scan all the books in the world." I've already linked one of these petitions in a past update, here's a couple more:
ISBNdb: Save the Archive and Stop Feeding Rare and Out-of-Print Books Into the Shredder
Stop the Destruction of Books: Protect Heritage & Copyright from AI Systems
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-destruction-of-books-protect-heritage-copyright-from-ai-systems
*And despite their 'Project Panama,' the AI can have trouble locating Panama on a map (just like many places and inaccurate maps). Here's an AI map mislabelling Colombia as Panama, while Panama City is placed in Costa Rica:
'I asked Chat GPT to make a route map flying from Orlando FL to Panama City Panama'
https://www.reddit.com/r/aifails/comments/1lsoiu8/i_asked_chat_gpt_to_make_a_route_map_flying_from/
*The New Mexico data center project involved in the 'Force Majeure' notice described earlier, is being opposed by several petitions here at change.org including this one with 2,900+ signatures:
Stop Data Center Construction in Las Cruces Desert (Project Jupiter)
https://www.change.org/p/stop-data-center-construction-in-las-cruces-desert-project-jupiter
*Speaking of New Mexico, a few weeks ago Meta was ordered to pay $25 billion in a New Mexico lawsuit, after the Unfair Practices Act was violated millions of times:
CNBC, 'Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case'
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/21/meta-new-mexico-cambridge-analytica-penalty.html
Meta is still facing 21 copyright infringement lawsuits and 8 civil lawsuits according to the site below.
*Update on case numbers involving 'Artificial Intelligence' in America:
Copyright infringement cases against AI companies: 157 (147 active)
Civil law suits against AI companies: 138
Data centre lawsuits: 52
Reference: https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/
***
*I recently found a database with 6,000+ 'reports of AI harms':
AI Incident Database
*Also I discovered more anti-AI movement sites:
'Quit GPT'
'Stop the AI Race'
*And a whole community of horrific AI generated maps on Reddit (300+ map examples) with the rule that the maps "must hurt to look at". These include some of the most absurdly wrong maps that have ever been created:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aimapgore/?f=flair_name%3A%22AI%20Map%22
*One term which has been given for AI programs is a "Stochastic parrot." That they are parroting back words from their Large Language Models, similar to how a parrot speaks words without understanding them.
The Two Words the AI Industry Hates More Than Anything [stochastic parrots]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z7oA9ndmdY
*A journalist investigated underhanded tactics by AI promoters using false accounts here:
How I Exposed the AI Industry’s Fake Social Media Accounts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzOELg371Ps
*More about Character.ai going bankrupt:
AI Startup Character.ai Files For Bankruptcy - AI Bubble Bursting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcMTe1AbvjY
*A description of the court case involving OpenAI and Microsoft, with quotes from Microsoft's own director mentioning problems with AI, described here:
The Largest Theft In Human History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVIPinTiQVc
*The lies behind the promises of what AI can do is talked about by a computing consultant:
Everyone in AI Is Lying—and They Know It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkrAg6cWAk
*Risks and issues with Anthropic's public float, including $600 billion in computing contracts it cannot cancel, difficult to pay with a net loss and revenue which may not be sustainable:
Anthropic Lost $80B, And That's Not The Scariest Part of IPO S-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFozOsKZLU
*An investor points out Anthropic's released revenue figures are from the 'tokenmaxxing' period when employees were encouraged to use AI tokens before these became too expensive (I mentioned someone else talking about this in the petition). While he believes it was "very intentional" for the company to hide figures from the quarter after their revenue dropped:
Steve Eisman: Here's What Anthropic Isn't Telling You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoSVG3P6z0
*Another commentator points out important details were LEFT BLANK in Anthropic's Initial Public Offering 'S-1' form: "All the key numbers are blank." - D. Gerard. Quoted from:
Anthropic files its ‘IPO’ — but key numbers are missing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFG2_uKlinw&t=250s
*Ed Zitron argues that the main reason for the public float is so the owners of stock can cash out:
"the only objective of this IPO is to dump Anthropic onto the public markets... the sheer speed at which insiders and shareholders can exit this company is remarkable."
Quoted from 'Exit Liquidity.'
https://www.wheresyoured.at/exit-liquidity/
*Anthropic is also facing 15 separate copyright infringement lawsuits (plaintiffs: Bartz, Concord Music x 2, Cambronne, BMG, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cognella, Gilbert, Round Hill Music, Cruz, Kwon, Shakespeare, Sony, Reservoir Media and most recently the Elvis estate.)
Source: https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/aicopyrightcasetracker/
Click on 'By Defendant' to see Anthropic is listed as 4th place in copyright infringement case count behind OpenAI (29), Meta (21) and Microsoft (17) - at the time of writing.
*The Elvis case described further here:
Owners of Elvis music rights sue Anthropic for copyright violations
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6rmyl0kxyxjo
*The suit by the Elvis estate reminds me of visiting the Elvis museum in Parkes earlier this year. I remember watching a video talking about how his timeless classic music will live forever. Well, not if AI companies have anything to do with it: for them creative work is only training data. Just like many classic works of music, film, art, books, and other mediums which are supposed to be protected under Copyright. The world's wonderful, marvellous, entertaining Creative work (+ every adjective in the dictionary, for no one word does the whole oeuvre justice; with different amounts of different words needed in different degrees and combinations to describe different works!) shouldn't be misused and turned into slop.
*The 'Meerkat Explains' channel describe numerous financial problems facing the AI industry in a series of meerkat themed cartoons. One compares AI company stock market floats to the launch of a steamship that looks a lot like the Titanic, here:
OpenAI Is In Bigger Trouble Than You Think(Worse Than Dot Com)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2NFfsRwUQ
*If the AI companies are the Titanic, in this metaphor the iceberg might be the AI backlash or 'Anti-AI Content Boom.' The content links that I've given in the petition and updates are only the tip of this very large iceberg. I try not to link too much from any one channel, to give a wide variety of sources. But many of these Youtube channels which produce content critical of AI might add a new video each week, which over time builds up. Some individual channels have dozens of videos or posts.
These all help prove the AI 'emperor' has no clothes, which is another metaphor I have seen repeated in comments: the idea that AI is an unprofitable scam or 'ponzi scheme' (also an often made criticism) which people are realising, just like in that folk tale when they finally noticed there were no clothes on the emperor.
More information about Ponzi schemes:
"A Ponzi scheme pays existing investors with money from new investors rather than actual profits, requiring continuous recruitment until it inevitably collapses."
Quoted from
The Conversation, 'Are we in an AI bubble? Ponzi schemes and financial bubbles: lessons from history.'
*Hopefully the AI bubble can 'burst' without damaging the rest of society. Because Generative AI is not really needed, this is what one financial channel suggests might happen:
"Now, the good thing about every single AI company being unprofitable and the true cost of AI being far far higher than the cost we actually pay for tokens is that AI itself isn't actually very useful yet. So even if we did massively halt or even stop every single AI data center from being built and the cost to use AI went up 100 times overnight, well there wouldn't actually be a hit to inflation because 99% of people's lives are completely unaffected by AI. And that's the same to be said for 99% of the economy as well. AI has no impact whatsoever on the prices or the supply and the demand of products and services in the economy today."
Quoted from
BlackRock CEO PANICS As AI Collapse Threatens $4 TRILLION Loss For BlackRock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCbkYDZYxfA
*Since it's Halloween today, here's a page of grotesque AI image fails, which illustrate the disaster of having Generative AI turn copyrighted work into slop:
'50 AI Art Fails That Are Both Horrifying And Hilarious'
https://2.boredpanda.com/ai-fails/ (Not for the squeamish)
*On a lighter note is The Daily Show's parody of 'AI bros' after their meeting at the White House:
Jon Stewart Unpacks AI’s Dubious Promise of a "Better Future"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S18jxWZntUo
*Jon Stewart also has an excellent interview with Ed Zitron here:
Data Centers, Debt & the Risks of AI’s Finances
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sDzlv-VI2U
Tip: Many people object to AI generated results in search engines. To search without using AI in google, add -ai to your search.
***
*Thanks for over 500 signatures!!!
*And Happy Halloween!!