Shopify CEO Tobi L\u00fctke says AI has produced a new kind of lazy work at his company, where employees generate too much and leave coworkers to check it<\/p>\n
L\u00fctke made the comments on The Knowledge Project podcast, released Sept. 15. He said Shopify has an internal name for AI output that gets handed to a colleague without being read. Staff call it a slop grenade<\/p>\n
The comments come roughly 17 months after L\u00fctke shared with employees that using AI was a baseline expectation at Shopify.\u00a0In the same interview, he mentioned that up to about half of the company\u2019s pull requests, those are the code changes engineers submit for review, are generated from conversations in a company chat, where an internal AI agent helps out<\/p>\n
On Sept. 3, I shared data from freelance marketplaces indicating increasing demand for individuals who correct AI output.\u00a0L\u00fctke explains this process as checking work within a company, where the cost is covered by a coworker\u2019s time rather than an external bill<\/p>\n
Host Shane Parrish inquired if AI had made anything worse within Shopify.\u00a0L\u00fctke responded around the 16-minute mark of the episode<\/p>\n
\u201cThe failure case now of lazy work is not lack of output,\u201d L\u00fctke said<\/p>\n
He explained the issue as over-output and shared two examples.\u00a0The first is about an employee asking an AI agent for a code change, approving the pull request without reading it closely, and leaving colleagues to review it.\u00a0The second example shows someone using a language model to turn a short point into a long email, which the recipient then shortens again with another model<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we call those \u2018slop grenades\u2019 that people toss at each other,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
L\u00fctke\u2019s advice on the email was to use the model to make a point shorter, not longer. Earlier in the interview, he said machines can\u2019t take responsibility for work and people do<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t say the term is exclusively his.\u00a0In a post on X, L\u00fctke credited Harry Brundage for coming up with it and mentioned he hopes it becomes popular<\/p>\n
In April 2025, L\u00fctke posted an internal memo that said \u201creflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at Shopify.\u201d Roger Montti covered the memo for Search<\/a> Engine Journal at the time<\/p>\n The memo said AI use would be part of peer and performance reviews. Teams asking for more headcount would first have to show why AI couldn\u2019t do the work<\/p>\n That October, a Shopify engineer wrote that the company had reached \u201cuniversal adoption of AI code editors,\u201d with thousands of Cursor licenses and unlimited access to top AI models for every team<\/p>\n On the podcast, L\u00fctke described River, an AI agent that works in Shopify\u2019s Slack channels and can open pull requests. He estimated that up to about half of Shopify\u2019s pull requests are created from conversations in the company\u2019s chat, where River operates<\/p>\n He dedicated much of the interview to explaining how he personally uses AI, including a team of agents he consults to debate both sides of a difficult decision<\/p>\n The demand for freelancers who correct AI-generated work is rising across three platforms, as per internal platform data shared by the Guardian<\/a> on September 2.\u00a0On Freelancer.com, listings tagged with phrases like \u201ccorrect AI\u201d and \u201cAI hallucination\u201d grew by 87%, reaching 10,760 worldwide from August 2025 to June 2026.\u00a0Upwork data indicated a 70% year-over-year surge in AI remediation gigs.\u00a0Additionally, Fiverr searches for \u201cAI cleanup\u201d services increased over 20-fold from 2023 to 2026, according to the report<\/a>.<\/p>\n BetterUp, which offers workplace coaching, ran a September 2025 survey with the Stanford Social Media Lab that explored in-house activities.\u00a0The survey involved over 1,000 full-time U.S. desk workers.\u00a0About four in 10 respondents shared<\/a> that they experienced \u201cworkslop,\u201d\u00a0AI-generated work that appears polished but doesn\u2019t really advance their tasks, in the past month.\u00a0On average, each instance took nearly two hours to resolve.\u00a0All this information is based on self-reported data.<\/p>\n Shopify reports universal adoption of AI code editors, yet its CEO still calls unreviewed output the thing AI made worse.\u00a0The adoption rate doesn\u2019t indicate whether the work was saved or shifted to the recipient. For content and marketing teams using AI for initial drafts, the time editors spend reviewing these drafts is part of the overall cost<\/p>\n The 2025 memo set expectations for how AI should be used, while Shopify\u2019s October 2025 post reported that AI adoption had become widespread.\u00a0However, neither spending reviewing AI output<\/p>\n The freelancers in that Guardian report disagreed on how long cleanup work will last. One writer expected much of it to dry up within five to 10 years as models improve. A designer predicted AI would match her logo work within a couple of years<\/p>\n Featured Image: beast01\/Shutterstock<\/em><\/p>\n CategoryNewsAI Search<\/p>\n \n En rapport:<\/strong> \n <a href="https:\/\/yoursite.com\/automation-africa\/" title="WhatsApp<\/a> Marketing Automation Africa : 6 erreurs dangereuses commises par les marques au Nig\u00e9ria\u201d> Rejoindre Justfine Infotech<\/strong> and build real digital skills<\/a> in AI, automation, web development, digital marketing, office productivity, e-commerce, freelancing and cybersecurity.<\/p>\n Programmes disponibles :<\/strong> WhatsApp :<\/strong>Review Work Is Showing Up Elsewhere<\/h2>\n
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