“Slop” Hits the Mainstream: How AI Junk Content Flooded the Internet - and the Dictionary

It started as a trickle - awkwardly written blog posts, bizarre product reviews, and uncanny news blurbs. Now, the deluge is impossible to ignore. In a year when artificial intelligence has redrawn the boundaries of what passes for information, the English language itself has responded with a new verdict: “slop.” That’s the word Merriam-Webster has crowned as its 2025 Word of the Year, an unflinching label for the tidal wave of AI-generated junk washing over our digital lives.

When the Dictionary Calls Out AI Junk

For centuries, dictionaries have chronicled the evolution of language, but rarely does a word so perfectly encapsulate a technological turning point. According to Greg Barlow, president of Merriam-Webster, the decision to spotlight “slop” was driven by a clear spike in user searches - a sign that millions are now grappling with the consequences of AI’s unbridled content creation.

The definition is direct: “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” But behind these words lies a global reckoning. Generative AI models, once hailed as tools for creativity and efficiency, are now producing massive amounts of text, images, and videos - much of it riddled with errors, misinformation, or outright nonsense. This “slop” clogs search engines, social media feeds, and even reputable websites, making it harder for users to distinguish fact from fiction.

Barlow describes the term as “illustrative” - a fitting response to a technology that has become “fascinating, annoying, and a little bit ridiculous.” The dictionary’s choice reflects not just a linguistic trend, but a cultural one: the normalization of skepticism toward machine-generated content.

A New Era of Digital Doubt

The rise of “slop” follows a string of AI-related words entering the mainstream. Cambridge Dictionary selected “hallucinate” in 2023, referencing AI’s tendency to fabricate plausible-sounding falsehoods. Oxford University Press went with “rage bait,” highlighting the manipulation of emotions for clicks. It’s clear that language is evolving as fast as the technology it seeks to describe.

The origin story of “slop” is itself a journey - from 18th-century mud and pig feed to 21st-century digital debris. While the word’s meaning has shifted, its connotations of worthlessness endure. Now, as “slop” becomes the shorthand for AI’s dark side, the challenge for users, platforms, and the tech industry is to separate the useful from the useless - and to restore trust in the digital commons.