Like most tools, generative AI models might be misused. And when the misuse gets bad enough that a significant dictionary notices, you understand it has turn out to be a cultural phenomenon.
On Sunday, Merriam-Webster announced that “slop” is its 2025 Word of the Yr, reflecting how the term has turn out to be shorthand for the flood of low-quality AI-generated content that has spread across social media, search results, and the net at large. The dictionary defines slop as “digital content of low quality that’s produced normally in quantity by way of artificial intelligence.”
“It’s such an illustrative word,” Merriam-Webster President Greg Barlow told The Associated Press. “It’s a part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that folks have found fascinating, annoying, and a little bit bit ridiculous.”
To pick out its Word of the Yr, Merriam-Webster’s editors review data on which words rose in search volume and usage, then reach consensus on which term best captures the yr. Barlow told the AP that the spike in searches for “slop” reflects growing awareness amongst users that they’re encountering fake or shoddy content online.
Dictionaries have been tracking AI’s impact on language for the past few years, with Cambridge having chosen “hallucinate” as its 2023 word of the yr resulting from the tendency of AI models to generate plausible-but-false information (longtime Ars readers might be blissful to listen to there’s one other word for that within the dictionary as well).
The trend extends to online culture typically, which is ripe with latest coinages. This yr, Oxford University Press selected “rage bait,” referring to content designed to impress anger for engagement. Cambridge Dictionary chosen “parasocial,” describing one-sided relationships between fans and celebrities or influencers.
The difference between the child and the bathwater
Because the AP points out, the word “slop” originally entered English within the 1700s to mean soft mud. By the 1800s, it had evolved to explain food waste fed to pigs, and eventually got here to mean rubbish or products of little value. The brand new AI-related definition builds on that history of describing something unwanted and unsightly.