Fake AI images destroy our collective memory. On January 13, 2026, the German Network of Digital History And Memory sent an open letter to social media platforms demanding they take action against AI slop. Here is their original open letter on their German website.
„We—institutions of history and political education—view the recent massive emergence of fabricated AI-generated content (AI slop) about National Socialism on social media platforms with great concern. These posts distort history by sentimentalizing and trivializing it. They change the viewing habits of users, who increasingly doubt even authentic historical documents,“ says the letter.
Dozens of German Holocaust memorial sites and research institutions sound an alarm that should concern all of us—all museums, archives, and cultural institutions. AI slop undermines their credibility and replaces documents and photos that have a time and a place in history with fictional imagery and fake stories.
„For example, AI-generated images are circulating that show an alleged reunion between prisoners and liberators, or fictional scenes of crying children behind barbed wire. Artificial intelligence is being used here to create content that consists of a mixture of historical facts and emotionalized fiction.
There are different motives behind this content: On the one hand, so-called content farms use the emotional impact of the Holocaust to achieve maximum reach with minimal effort. This is a business model based on clicks and advertising revenue. On the other hand, this content is used specifically to downplay historical facts, shift the roles of victims and perpetrators, or spread revisionist narratives. The platforms‘ algorithms favor emotionally charged content, regardless of its truthfulness […],“ says the open letter.
We who grew up with actual history books produced by reliable sources are able to say what a historic memory is. Future generations will not be able to do that. AI slop is flooding their senses and forming their inner images of historic events and people by simply overwhelming and washing away actual content.
Jan-Christian Petersen