I made an AI SlopStopper plugin for WordPress

I’ve agonized over how or whether to responsibly incorporate AI-generated content in to my author site. I’ve always leaned into technology, adopting whatever tools have helped me to express myself, which is why I started an author page in the first place. But it’s becoming clear to me that this technology has to be handled with more care than most other technologies that have come before.

At the same time, as a website visitor, I hate that I have no input into how much AI content I’m seeing as the Internet and social media platforms increasingly drown in an ocean of AI slop.

So I made a plugin, AI SlopStopper, as a service to my readers, to put the choice in their hands. Essentially, it identifies the AI content on my site and provides users with a toggle to turn them on and off. If they think the AI-generated content on my site enhances their experience, they should have the option to view that content. If they’d rather experience an internet with less AI-generated content, they should be able to have that experience as well. Either way, they should be made aware, as much as possible, which parts of the site were made by a human and which parts are AI.

I also made the SlopStopper to keep myself honest. Running the plugin on my own website has forced me to consider new ways to optimize design and content for AI-heads and tech-skeptics alike. It’s made me think about whether each usage can be justified for how it serves the reader, enhances the presentation, allows the use of skills I don’t have—or if it’s just me being too lazy to do the work myself.

I used AI to help code the plugin because I’m absolutely not a plugin dev. It was kind of fun to ask an AI to code itself into oblivion, in a way. It took a lot of debugging, and there are still improvements and new features I’d like to add, but last night I submitted the initial release version to the WordPress plugin repository for review. It could take a couple weeks for approval. Fingers crossed!

I have SlopStopper running on my author site. The toggle is in the lower left corner of every screen. I’ll provide an update when the plugin is available from the WordPress repository. In the meantime, I’d love any feedback people may have. If anyone wants to try it on their own site, I can provide a zip file.

Thanks!