A new study has found that a significant portion of content appearing on TikTok’s For You feed for new users may be AI-generated, raising fresh concerns about the growing presence of synthetic media on short-form video platforms.
According to research conducted by video creation company Kapwing, nearly 59% of videos recommended on a newly created TikTok account were classified as “AI slop” a term used to describe low-quality or fully AI-generated content.
The same test conducted on YouTube Shorts showed a considerably lower proportion, with around 21% of videos falling into the same category.
For the study, Kapwing created a fresh TikTok account and analyzed the first 500 videos displayed on its For You feed. Out of these, 294 videos were identified as AI-generated or AI-assisted content. A parallel experiment on YouTube Shorts found 104 similar videos out of 500.
The company also expanded its review by manually analyzing more than 10,000 TikTok videos across 20 different categories. The findings showed that content aimed at children had the highest concentration of AI-generated material.
In the Kids category alone, 57% of 2,000 reviewed videos were classified as AI-generated. Specific hashtags showed even higher levels, with #cartoonkids recording 97% AI-generated content, while #cartoons and #babysong both reached 83%. The #forkids category followed with 79%.
Other content areas also showed varying levels of AI presence. Science and Education recorded around 35%, while Health and History stood at approximately 33%. These categories often rely on illustrated visuals and narration, making them more susceptible to AI-generated content.
In contrast, categories featuring real-life activities showed much lower levels of synthetic media. Fashion recorded just 1.3%, followed by Music at 1.5% and Fitness at 1.6%.
The report also noted that TikTok had already labeled around 1.3 billion videos as AI-generated by November 2025, highlighting the platform’s increasing reliance on automated detection systems.
Overall, the findings suggest that AI-generated videos now make up a substantial share of content recommended to new users, particularly in child-focused categories, raising questions about content quality and transparency on short-form video platforms.
