Only recently became aware of this. Someone had made an amp sim of an amp that I was interested in, had only one example. Sounded...not terrible but not like the gear. So I asked the developer some questions, and became suspicious when they couldn't answer basic questions about the gear they were supposedly modelling; questions about the topology, the on-board effects in the amp. Did some digging and found the creator posting in groups for vibe coding. When I asked them about it I got response that seemed like they had AI help them write it.

There are signs, as has been noted above in this thread the manual is a good place to start. These people do not code their own plugins and as such have little understanding as to how they work, and it shows with how vague they are about it. If the plugin is based on hardware, a lack of knowledge regarding the nuances of the hardware is an obvious tell. The developer's pedigree is also an easy sign; if they have been making plugins for years now then they have the knowledge base to actually code, if they have been involved in the hardware or production world for a while and are designing plugins with a clear concept or purpose then it's probably a good sign. Not definitive, but a good sign.

And of course don't buy any stuff that you can't demo first.

 

Which amp sim is this? I probably used it and thought it was amazing.

 

I've noticed that couple of months ago. All those Carve Audios, Canvas Audios, F that A.s Audios bunch of nonsense AI slop plugins. I honestly stopped to care when I see another compressor or EQ, I don't even try them anymore. And the worse part, it's just a beginning. They prey on consumer's ignorance, to me it is even worse than selling warez, because warez sites might have some old-n-gold plugins you can't find anywhere else, but this... this is just junk.

 

I don't know if Canvas Audio is AI vibe coding slop, but I know they paid a lot of money to YouTubers to have them pretend they are excited about their plugins. Guess how many are using them in subsequent videos? Yeah, zero. But it sounds so good!

 

An orange rockerverb clone by some small developer. They didn't even bother to throw in a spring IR for the reverb tank, it's just like a standard JUCE reverb lol

 

They are, I saw their plugins on Audioloom website.

 

well, if the enduser does not hear if it good or bad, why bother are about the DSP code...

 

In some cases the cream does rise to the top. In a market dominated by finance capital, however, what we see is a deluge of mediocre products. Some start on the ground as mediocre products while others (investors) just buy companies and then pump out inferior products through their established brand. That's a lot of noise and trends to "rise" through.
Backed by capital, companies also flood media platforms with marketing and astro-turfed influencing. The product gets so much exposure, a consumer is likely to give it some attention. Very similar to radio stations playing the same singles over and over.

There's much more happening here in our system of consumption/production, reinforced by media systems and influencers, than just crappy plugins being pumped out.

Of course everything is more nuanced than this. We do have great developers creating awesome plugins but we also have seen innovative companies get swallowed up by bigger companies and are now just a shell of what they were - rushing along with the rest of the mediocre flood.

 

Last edited: Feb 19, 2026 at 6:48 PM

Just curious - How would this discussion change for you if we were to establish which brand is doing AI prompting vs which brand is incompetent / doing amateurish coding.

 

its a tale as old as time. someone figures out how to use a new tool and make money off of it. They are making money by solving a problem. Thats just how business works. Stop complaining and pay 20 a month for cursor, or 100 a month for claude code and just prompt a better plugin and give it out for free. If they can prompt it so can you. solve that problem of them charging 99 for a plugin and undercut them by giving the same thing out for free.

 

A more effective strategy might be to offer a subscription plan where the first month is complimentary. It has been observed that some individuals only become aware of the necessity to cancel their plan months after the stipulated deadline.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to living or deceased persons is purely coincidental.

 

Don't want to sound apocalyptical, but in the next years everything will become cloud based/subscription based so... backup what you already have and works for you.

AI is eating up not only water and mineral resources, but also memory chips, so be prepared for shortage and price rise in available hardware.

And AI slop is already flooding the net all over the place. People are becoming zombies using AI to make stupid images, videos, movies, songs, plugins... slop, slop, slop: this is the future of internet.

I am planning to go back to play live again, as internet and social media will soon be only bots and AI slop, and humans will stop caring for what they listen to or watch, if it's made by a real human or a bot, if it has quality or if it is total shit, they will simply not care anymore. Live performances may become the last refuge for those who love music.

 

Last edited: Feb 19, 2026 at 9:19 PM

this has always been a problem, 90% of plugins are just rehashes of whatever algorithms are newly published in academia
the only difference is the bar to entry is lower now so the issue is more obvious

 

or just stop buying plug-ins.

 

How old? What parts of the world?
What tale? Sounds like you're the one telling tales except you're not really saying anything explaining how "business works". Just regurgitating buzz phrases.
Depending on the type of economy, time in history, just to name a couple variables, there are many other things that dictate how "business works" within a particular region. Old as time? So finance capitalism has been here forever? It's the universal law of commerce?

Your reply reads like you're mixing in an emotional response to a topic that's trying to ground a critical analysis of a structure that facilitates short term gains and maximum profit with very little input.
This was not the case during the period of industrial capitalism. Things were made with large investments in research and development and the quality of the product was under scrutiny from the general public.

You don't really know what you're talking about when you say:

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2026 at 4:23 PM

Like I said, I don't disagree with the sentiment, but saying that apples are oranges doesn't make the argument stronger. There have been shit plugins since making plugins was a possibility. If you want to say that a bad plugin is AI slop, I want to know how you got to that conclusion. If the conclusion was made solely because the plugin is bad, that doesn't really say anything about it being AI slop. Could it be AI? Surely it could, but at the same time it's possible it's just incompetence. Both are bad plugins at the end of the day, and that's where I agree with the sentiment.

 

It is not AI for coding, because you really need to know programming to use it.
It is simply taking open source code and packaging it into a plugin.
That's why at the end ... they all sound the same.

Or take a JUCE base, with integrated compressor, EQ ... nothing to add apart marketing and GUI.

That's why we are more flooded by cloned EQ, compressors ... than synths.

 

anyone actually buys plugins in 2026 when anyone can code anything "for free"?? (sarcasm 60% up)

by quality of release changelog, updates, efficiency etc...
AI is terrible at making things optimized and doing consistent long-term maintenance

PS: it would be fun to see AI cracking tools on the rise (not because AI being good at reverse engineering, but because AI slop code being so hollow and predictable to hack)

 

i think he tries to dispel the prejudice that someone who offers a creative software for money is automatically entitled to some own creativity and/or knowlegde.

and actually 20 years ago that was probably been more true than today, that people who make software also had an idea of why the make it, or made it because they knew they are good in it and/or have fun in doing it.

that people just upload some stolen oder rendered content into the web while pretending to be more, just to generate some money off it, is a realtively new phaenomenon for news articles, arts or software.

fake shit existed before, for example in fields like financial products, sales organisations, consulting, and eventually plastic toys.

in many other fields it did not - i would not be able to name a single audio plug-in for classic MacOS 25 years back which would be vaporware, stolen, or completely nonworking and nonsupprted.


there is a major difference between, say, luxury cars and VST compressors.

for luxury cars there are hundreds of laws and regulations which ensure a certain quality standard, and the investment of the producer is so high and so long-term, that he can not risk to ruin his reputation by selling shit. a software developer can basically hide behind a pseudonym and collect money via bitcoin under a .tv domain with false identity.