Jan 18, 2026
3 min read
Capwing conducted a study of AI-powered videos on YouTube, noting the growth of channels featuring AI productions.
Small videos created with artificial intelligence tools and classified as "AI Slop" or "brain rot" are becoming increasingly popular on YouTube around the world, according to research by video editing company Kapwing.
The study shows that between 21 and 33% of the news on the platform fall into this category.Brazil occupies fourth place on the list of countries with the most subscribers and the sixth most viewed.
Brazil leads the list with Aranha Insana, third in terms of the number of subscribers - 5.3 million, and seventh with the highest number of views among all the countries surveyed, earning over $3 million a year.
AI videos show "crazy" situations, memes and funny cartoons from the world of football in a funny or funny way.
The rise of negative AI-generated videos led the Oxford dictionary to choose "brain rot" as its word of the year, highlighting the negative impact of this type of content.
AI program video on YouTube
To arrive at the results, Kapwing researchers identified the top 100 most popular YouTube channels in all countries and highlighted the AI channels.
They then used the socialblade.com tool to count the number of views, subscribers and estimated annual revenue for these channels, consolidating the numbers for each country to confirm their popularity and how much they are doing.
A new YouTube account was created to record the number of AI craps and brain dead occurrences in the first 500 YouTube shorts to understand the new user experience.
See key results:
- The channels that concentrate videos made by Ai From Spain have a total of 20.22 million subscribers - a higher number than in the other countries surveyed.
- In South Korea, the trending channel AI slop has collected 8.45 billion views.
- The most watched AI slap channel is India's Bandar Apna Dost (2.07 billion views).It is estimated to earn US$ 4.2 million annually.
- US based slop channel Cuentos Facinantes [sic] has the most subscribers of any slop channel globally (5.95 million).
- Brainrot videos make up 33% of the first 500 videos that YouTube suggests to a new user's channel.
In Spain, Jesus became the subject of AI shenanigans
The AI subscriber base in Spain is led by one channel, Imperio de jesus, which has 5.87 million subscribers at the time of analysis, according to Kapwing, making it the second largest AI channel in the world.
Promising to strengthen "faith in Jesus through fun interactive games", the channel's videos put the religious figure in various scenarios where he must give the right answer to get to Satan, the Grinch and others.
Two other Spanish channels with more than 3.5 million subscribers focus on short, brain-rotting style comedies.
While the eight channels targeting AI Slab from Spain have the most subscribers, a group of 11 accounts from South Korea have the most views: around 8.45 billion in total.
That's almost 1.6 times more than second-placed Pakistan (5.34 billion), 2.5 times more than third-placed USA (3.39 billion) and 3.4 times more than Spain (2.52 billion), the survey shows.
AI Slop for new YouTubers
Kapwing's simulation of a new YouTube account found that users who join the platform with no previous viewing history or subscription are exposed to a significant amount of AI-cluttered or brain-spoiling videos.
The first 16 videos did not fall into these categories, but from 17 to 500, the algorithm offered 104 productions with low-quality AI and 165 of the Brain Rot variety.
"Part of the threat from artificial intelligence and some forms of brain rot is the extent to which these things, which may seem harmless fun, affect the laziest areas of our mental abilities," the report said.
The document recalls that research has proven that it is called the "false reality effect", which makes it more likely to believe false claims or images when they encounter them.
"AI tools make it easy for bad faith actors to create a fake enemy or situation that supports their beliefs or political goals. Seeing is believing, studies have shown that when users clearly say that a video is fake," Copwing pointed out.
The company recognizes the value of AI in video production, to the extent that the artist of AI content wins respect in some areas.And that top film schools now offer courses on the use and ethics of AI in cinema.
But he regrets that not everyone is held to the same standards:
“Unfortunately, some are using these methods to generate large amounts of AI spam – much like the 'spam' of the first video age.
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