I watched a deep dive video into the weird and wonderful world of AI slop memes which revealed a plot/campaign to legitimize AI “art”
Video source but I am going to summarize to the best of my ability:
“The Bizarre Rise of Tung Tung Tung Sahur (And the Lawsuit Nobody Expected)”
https://youtu.be/6BdRjuaGlJ0 (~22 minutes). Side note: I think Frankie Fey does an amazing job with researching and presenting these bizarre insight into what the “kids” are up to these days.
tl;dw
Gen Alpha and Gen Z use AI to make what they thought are public domain memes.
A RoBlox game called “Steal a brainrot” created by “SpyderSammy” used these memes in a Roblox game that prints money for the developer (Millions of USD per Month).
September 2025, SpyderSammy removed a very popular AI slop meme character called TTT (initials, name is much bigger) because of “Mementum Lab” demanding compensation. Mementum lab is trying to seize control of public domain memes - https://www.mementumlab.com/
Lots of drama ensues along with an escalating legal battle.
April 2026 the the AI slop meme character TTT shows up in Fortnite as an skin (think of it like an aesthetic costume for you player character) with a one time approximate purchase cost of 10~12 USD.
https://fortnite.gg/cosmetics?id=22470
Fortnite is a game created by Epic Games which is a massive money printing machine masquerading as a game. To be fair it has an almost cult like following and is supposedly a lot of fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite
Epic Games is owned by Tim Sweeney - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sweeney
In my opinion, Tim Sweeney is a greedy and disingenuous asshole billionaire.
Tim Sweeney also owns the Unreal Engine (a massively popular and ubiquitous tool for making games that is also a money printer).
Put it all together. MemetumLabs is trying to turn AI slop into property with a monetary value. They failed to extract money from the Roblox meme game made by SypderSammy LLC. Tim Sweeney via his game Fortnite has swooped in to help try and make MemetumLab’s more legitimate.
Additionally there are substantial rumors that the next version of Unreal Engine (version 6) is going to be packed with AI slop generating “features”.
Not relevant to this post, Fortnite is why Wall Street has murdered a big chunk of the games industry as they try to make their own perpetual money printing machine.
Thank you for attending my Ted Talk, please exit through the Gift shop.
I wonder how that is supposed to work, when it’s been ruled that copyright does not apply to the output of an AI.
There needs to be a transformative change for copyright to apply. It’s hard to see how the company would have legal standing to sue over it.
As I understand it, because SCOTUS refused to hear the latest AI copyright case, that leaves the door open for them to reconsider later.