Shopify CEO: employees' 'slop grenades' are making more work for everyone else

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke says a surge in unvetted AI output is creating more work, not less: employees who toss what he calls "slop grenades" - AI-generated emails, code and documents that look polished but are unexamined - force colleagues to clean up mistakes and wasted content. Lütke, who previously told staff AI use was a baseline expectation, warns against letting models "go nuts" and expects humans to synthesize and check results rather than outsource responsibility. Duolingo’s CEO made a similar pivot after scaling AI-generated lessons and finding roughly 20% of output to be unusable, illustrating how initial AI enthusiasm can backfire when quality control lags.

Researchers have named the phenomenon "workslop" and quantified its impact: a BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab survey of 962 U.S. full-time desk workers found 52.7% admitted to sending workslop and 38% had received it, with receivers spending an average 3.4 hours per month fixing others’ AI-produced work. Recipients reported damaged workplace perceptions and avoidance of colleagues tied to slop. Incidence and cleanup time rose from last year (40% encountering workslop, two hours of rework), with estimates of $186 per employee per month and up to $9 million annually for a 10,000-person organization. Examples include well-structured emails with broken links and overly complicated code whose surface polish masks unusability.