Over the past several days, famous YouTube creators like Casey Neistat and MrBeast used words like “frightening” or “scary” to describe the various implications surrounding the new artificial intelligence (AI) video creation app Sora that quickly rose to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store charts. And although these popular YouTubers (influencers) are mostly concerned about how the platform generating massive amounts of "AI slop" will impact parts of the creator economy. Though, there's many similar “terrifying” implications surrounding how this type of generative AI technology could speed up product proliferation that the CPG industry hasn't fully considered yet. Also, since we’re still in the very early innings of the AI industrial revolution, and the current median age of U.S. governmental lawmakers is one of the oldest Congressional groups in history (which have proven through public hearings they can barely understand early web 2.0 concepts let alone the next generation of the internet), it largely implies that the private sector will have ample space to “move fast and break things.” And in the case of these newest AI technologies (created by massive technology companies), they’re currently deep in human behavior research mode…testing various “attention at all costs” theories. But most industry professionals would agree that it has never been easier than right now to launch a CPG product. Often driven by the rapid emergence of digital technologies (and democratized advanced contract manufacturing techniques), smaller companies can develop and launch CPG products with less money, reduced expertise, smaller teams, and increased speed. And these constant lowering barriers-to-entry across the CPG industry have substantially grown the overall number of products launched annually. But over the last decade, I’ve thoroughly documented the “Catch-22” nature of the “Endless Aisle Age.” The sheer volume of new CPG products entering the market does provide optionality (especially for niche consumer demand), but it also potentially saturates the market with low-quality or unnecessary items. In that regard, it’s important to remember there’s a fairly limited total categorical (and/or format) spend each day…and if there’s more supply of CPG products vying for that relatively static amount of demand, competition intensifies. And that’s largely why even within niche categories…it has become increasingly difficult for truly innovative (and valuable) CPG products to stand out and succeed.But here’s maybe the most “terrifying” part…even though the CPG industry has recently shifted seemingly overnight from cautious experimentation to full-scale adoption of generative AI, it hasn’t augmented product creation to the same/similar level as what I detailed earlier surrounding content creation (at least yet). What happens when all you need to do is type a few words into your phone from your bed in a dark room, click a button…and it gives you a priced manufacturable CPG product, and then it’s essentially ready for sale? And you do that 1000 times a day, every day! The larger financial aspect involving “CPG AI slop” might help challenge the idea that a capability to create automatically implies a moral imperative to do so, but as those cost barriers diminish further…the future probability of “CPG AI slop” pervasiveness becomes more worrisome. But even without this “AI slop” threat being real currently, CPG companies are already struggling to compete for “share of attention” with algorithm hacking higher-reach, lower-quality goods.