One of the unexpected consequences of freely available AI tools like Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT has been the rise of what’s quickly becoming known as ‘grandmaslop’. It seems that grandparents are filling their family albums with AI versions of pictures of their grandchildren and sending them to their kids.
When it comes to using generative AI on family photos, at least, the trend has exposed a striking generational divide.
“I’m Gen X, but my Boomer mom made a whole AI book for both of my kids. It was bizarre,” said one Reddit user, commenting on the rise of grandmaslop. “I think the weirdest part is, if photos are our way of immortalizing a moment in time for the sake of our memories, then what is an AI-generated image, if it’s a moment of time that never existed?” asked another user.
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Storybooks of slop
The ease of use of AI tools means that grandparents are creating whole storybooks of slop featuring their grandkids and emailing them to their kids.
“The books are crap, all have the same AI slop cartoon styling and the stories make no sense and have horrible meter”, said another Reddit user. “One was a rhyming book that had words that didn’t rhyme.”
The new phenomenon of ‘grandmaslop’ seems to be a perfect example of a topic that reveals the generational divide in approaches to AI. One user suggests that perhaps for a lot of people the concept and proof of a relationship is more important than the execution of an art project.
Another user agrees and wryly adds, “My father is the proudest grandparent in the world. He tells everyone how much he loves the grandkids he never sees, so that tracks”.
What’s interesting is that when it comes to the workplace, a Randstad report measuring AI adoption rates put Millennials as the quickest adopters of AI in their jobs, significantly more than GenZ, Gen X, and Boomers, with 50% of Millennials using AI compared to just 19% of Boomers and 34% of Gen X. “Their proficiency with Generation AI tools surpasses other generations, marking them as key players in the current AI landscape within workplaces”, says the report.
When it comes to their kids, however, Millennials apparently would rather leave AI out of the picture.
A generational divide
I think there’s something else going on here. Digging deeper into the thread on Reddit, it quickly descended into general grievances about the lack of effort grandparents show with their grandkids.
There seems to be a general level of resentment for the privileges that Boomer grandparents have enjoyed due to growing up in different economic circumstances and the general lack of effort parents perceive in them wanting to see their grandchildren, despite having the opportunities to do so. For example:
“My parents never miss an opportunity to say how much they miss the grandkids and wish they could see them more often, and it takes every ounce of my strength not to point out they’re both retired and in good health, have $80k/yr worth of pensions and social security, investment accounts worth close to $1mm, and live in a paid-off house.”
Perhaps the visceral reaction to ‘grandmaslop’ is really just the most visible tip of a much larger iceberg of resentment about the lack of effort put into grandparenting, and a generational divide that’s as much economic and cultural as it is to do with attitudes to AI.
After all, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a grandparent making a silly AI picture of their grandkids riding a dinosaur or flying through space. Some children will probably love it. But when an AI-generated storybook arrives from a grandparent who rarely turns up in person, it can start to look like another shortcut.
And perhaps that’s why ‘grandmaslop’ has touched such a nerve. The problem isn’t really that Grandma has discovered ChatGPT. It’s that, for some parents at least, generative AI has made it possible to simulate the effort they wish their children were getting for real.
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Graham Barlow
