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Yes: Merriam-Webster selected “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year. The dictionary announced the choice on December 14, 2025. In this newer sense, “slop” means low-quality digital content usually produced in quantity with artificial intelligence—not every piece of content made with AI.
What Merriam-Webster announced
Merriam-Webster’s human editors chose “slop” as the dictionary’s 2025 Word of the Year. The announcement was published on December 14, 2025, with wider news coverage appearing the following day.
The annual selection is not a scientific count of the most frequently used word in English. Merriam-Webster considers lookup and search activity alongside evidence of wider usage and cultural relevance. The choice recognizes a word whose meaning and public importance grew during the year.
Merriam-Webster defines the relevant sense of “slop” as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
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What “AI slop” means
In plain English, AI slop is digital material that is generally:
- AI-generated or substantially produced with AI;
- low in quality, usefulness, originality, or accuracy; and
- created or distributed at scale.
That can include strange AI videos, generic advertising images, repetitive social-media posts, search-oriented web pages, fake-looking news, propaganda, AI-written books, synthetic audio, and workplace documents that provide little value while creating more work for the people who receive them.
The word is deliberately dismissive. “Slop” evokes mud, waste, and unwanted food, making it a compact metaphor for an internet increasingly filled with cheap, abundant material. The term often expresses frustration with the volume of content as much as with any individual image, video, or article.
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AI-generated does not automatically mean slop
This is the most important qualification. Merriam-Webster’s definition does not describe all artificial-intelligence output as slop. It includes both a quality judgment and an implication of mass production.
A carefully researched and edited article that uses AI as one part of a human-led workflow may not fit the term. The same can be true of a well-directed film, illustration, piece of music, or educational resource made with AI assistance. Human review, fact-checking, editing, accountability, and purpose matter.
Conversely, low-value material made entirely by people may be described more broadly as “slop,” even if it is not AI slop. The AI-related sense is now prominent, but the word itself is not limited to artificial intelligence.
Why the word became prominent in 2025
Generative-AI systems made it inexpensive and fast to produce enormous quantities of digital material. Platforms, publishers, advertisers, online marketplaces, and workplaces all became potential channels for machine-generated output.
The result was not simply more media. It was a change in the economics of publishing and distribution: content could be produced faster than people could read, watch, verify, or moderate it. In that environment, “slop” became useful shorthand for output optimized for volume, visibility, or engagement rather than for careful communication.
Merriam-Webster highlighted examples ranging from absurd AI videos and off-kilter advertising to cheesy propaganda, realistic-looking fake news, AI-written books, and “workslop”—low-value AI-generated reports that waste colleagues’ time. The examples differ in format, but share a pattern: abundant production with insufficient judgment or review.
Slop compared with related terms
| Term | What it describes | How it differs from AI slop |
|---|---|---|
| Spam | Unsolicited or unwanted messages, often sent in bulk | Spam may be AI-generated, but it does not have to be low-quality AI content. |
| Misinformation | False or misleading information | Misinformation concerns truthfulness, not necessarily production method or volume. |
| Disinformation | False or misleading information deliberately spread to deceive | Disinformation involves intent; slop can be careless, commercial, humorous, or merely low-value. |
| Synthetic media | Media generated or materially altered with AI | Synthetic media may be polished and useful. It is not automatically slop. |
| AI slop | Low-quality digital content usually produced in quantity with AI | It is primarily a negative cultural judgment about quality and oversupply. |
These categories can overlap. For example, an AI-generated political video could be synthetic media, misinformation, disinformation, spam, and slop at the same time. But none of those labels is interchangeable with the others.
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The older history of “slop”
The AI-related meaning is new, but “slop” has been part of English for centuries. According to Merriam-Webster’s historical account, the word was used in the 1700s for soft mud. In the 1800s, it was associated with food waste, including feed for pigs. Later, it acquired broader figurative meanings involving rubbish or work considered to have little value.
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The digital meaning extends that existing metaphor rather than replacing the older definitions. Mud, discarded food, and low-value material became a way to describe unwanted machine-produced content. The metaphor works because digital waste can be plentiful, difficult to process, and dumped into spaces other people must clean up.
Why the label is useful—and risky
“Slop” is effective because it communicates several criticisms at once. It can point to:
- quantity overwhelming quality;
- generic or repetitive output;
- content optimized for clicks rather than usefulness;
- weak editorial review and unclear accountability;
- platform incentives that reward engagement; and
- the growing difficulty of distinguishing authentic and synthetic material.
It is also memorable and works across text, images, video, and audio. People do not need to understand machine-learning architecture to understand the basic complaint.
But “slop” is not an objective technical classification. There is no universally accepted test that determines whether a particular item qualifies. Research discussing the term, including work on measuring AI slop in text, has emphasized that its boundaries and measurement remain unsettled (arXiv research; OpenReview discussion).
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The label can therefore be misused. It may dismiss legitimate experimentation, amateur work, or AI-assisted work without examining its actual quality. A suspicious visual style is not proof that a piece was made with AI, and an AI origin is not proof that the result is worthless. Calling something slop should describe an informed judgment about the content, its production, and its context—not serve as a substitute for checking whether it is true.
A practical way to identify possible AI slop
No checklist can produce a definitive answer, but these questions help make the judgment more precise:
- Was AI used? Look for reliable disclosure or evidence rather than assuming from style alone.
- Is the result low-value? Consider whether it is inaccurate, generic, repetitive, misleading, careless, or unsuitable for its stated purpose.
- Was it produced at scale? A single experimental image is different from thousands of near-identical posts or pages.
- Was there meaningful human review? Who checked the facts, edited the work, and accepted responsibility for it?
- What is the purpose? Satire, parody, art, education, advertising, propaganda, and workplace communication may require different standards.
These questions also reveal why the term remains contested. Quality varies by audience, scale is not always visible, and the production process may be impossible to establish from the finished content alone.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the choice says about internet culture
Merriam-Webster’s selection reflects a shift from seeing AI as an occasional creative tool to experiencing it as an ambient feature of online life. Generated material now appears in feeds, search results, advertisements, books, reports, and news-like formats.
The choice also captures a cultural reaction that is more mocking than purely fearful. Earlier discussions of AI often focused on technical capability or existential risk. “Slop” focuses on the immediate everyday experience: too much content, too little care, and a growing burden on audiences to filter it.
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That makes the word culturally powerful even though it is imprecise. It names a feeling about the information environment as well as a type of content. It describes the sense that digital spaces are being filled with material designed to occupy attention, generate revenue, or satisfy an automated pipeline rather than to inform or entertain people well.
It was not the only 2025 recognition
The decision belongs specifically to Merriam-Webster. It does not mean that every dictionary or language organization selected “slop” for the same honor.
The American Dialect Society separately recognized “slop” as its 2025 Digital Word of the Year, a distinct category with its own process. Its announcement is available through the society’s official release and press-release PDF. The two recognitions underline the word’s visibility, but they should not be presented as the same award.
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Merriam-Webster named “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year because the term captured a defining tension of the AI era: digital content can now be made in extraordinary quantities, but abundance does not guarantee quality, accuracy, originality, or usefulness.
“AI slop” is best understood as a widely used, usually negative cultural label for low-quality digital content generally produced at scale with artificial intelligence. It is not a synonym for AI-generated content, synthetic media, spam, or misinformation, and it is not a scientifically settled category. Used carefully, however, it gives readers a concise way to talk about an increasingly crowded and uneven online environment.
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