Pinterest Users Voice Frustration Over AI-Generated Content

For years, Pinterest has served as a go-to source for genuine inspiration, from home decor to family meals. However, a growing wave of user frustration suggests the platform’s core appeal, authentic, human-curated content, is being diluted by a flood of AI-generated material. This shift is prompting dedicated users to question the value of their feeds and, in some cases, abandon the app altogether.

Take Caitlyn Jones, a regular user for five years who relied on Pinterest for weekly meal planning. Last September, she eagerly saved a recipe for creamy chicken and broccoli made in a slow cooker. After buying all the ingredients, she read the instructions more carefully. The first step bizarrely advised her to “log” the chicken into the appliance. Puzzled, she visited the recipe blog’s “About” page, which featured a photo of a flawlessly perfect woman named Souzan Thorne. The image had an unnatural sheen, and the biography was generic, speaking of a childhood where “the kitchen was the heart of everything.” Jones realized she was looking at an AI-generated persona.

“It seems dumb I didn’t catch this sooner, but being in my normal grocery shop rush, I didn’t even think this would be an issue,” she admits. Feeling committed, she prepared the recipe anyway. The result was a disappointing, watery, and bland dish. This experience was the final straw. Jones posted her complaint on the r/Pinterest subreddit, a hub for disgruntled users, declaring that the platform was losing the authentic pins and people that made it special. She has since stopped using Pinterest.

Her story highlights a broader phenomenon critics call “AI slop”, a term for the low-quality, mass-produced content generated by artificial intelligence that now clutches corners of the internet. From videos to blog posts, this material is designed primarily for engagement and monetization, not utility or authenticity. Experts note that Pinterest, with its image-heavy feed, is particularly vulnerable.

“All platforms have decided this is part of the new normal,” says Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech. “It is a huge part of the content being produced across the board.” He describes this content as an “unappetizing gruel being forcefully fed to us.” The case of “Souzan Thorne,” a persona with no digital footprint outside the recipe blog, is merely a visible symptom.

Pinterest originally built its brand as an ad-free “visual discovery engine,” cultivating a loyal community. Its growth to over half a billion users is undeniable. Yet, the very format that fueled its success now contributes to the problem. Realistic images are easier for AI models to generate than video, making a visual platform a prime target. Furthermore, Pinterest often directs traffic to external websites. For content farms, these outbound clicks are easier to monetize than building a genuine on-site following, creating a financial incentive to flood the platform with AI-generated posts.

This trend reflects a wider cycle some observers call “enshittification,” where platforms gradually degrade the user experience in pursuit of growth and revenue. For long-time Pinterest enthusiasts, the creeping presence of AI slop isn’t just an annoyance, it fundamentally undermines the trust and authenticity that drew them to the platform in the first place. The concern is that as AI content becomes more prevalent, distinguishing between human creativity and algorithmic output will become increasingly difficult, leaving users skeptical of the very ideas they came to discover.

(Source: Wired)