“Slop” and the Age of AI Overload
In December 2025, Merriam-Webster selected “slop” as its Word of the Year, capturing a cultural moment defined by the overwhelming presence of low-quality, AI-generated content across digital platforms and even into professional environments.
Originally, “slop” referred to mud, refuse, or food waste for animals. Over centuries its meaning broadened to include anything of little or no value. In 2025 its definition has shifted again: the dictionary now characterizes “slop” as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
Why “Slop” Captures 2025
The choice of “slop” reflects a pervasive frustration with how AI’s rapid adoption has reshaped online information and creative spaces. Rather than celebrating purely the technology’s capabilities, the designation highlights a backlash against the glut of low-effort, mass-produced media that users encounter daily. Whether it’s absurd videos, bizarre AI ads, or algorithm-generated text that contributes little real insight, the digital landscape has been described as saturated with content that feels meaningless or hollow.
This phenomenon isn’t confined to casual browsing. The term has even been extended to describe workplace documents,some have begun calling sloppy, AI-generated reports “workslop,” referring to polished-looking content that ultimately adds no real value and drains time as colleagues revise or reinterpret it.
Cultural Resonance and Public Reaction
The designation of “slop” signals more than annoyance; it illustrates a growing cultural awareness of quality and authenticity in an era dominated by automated content. Editors at Merriam-Webster note that the spike in searches for this word suggests that people are increasingly discerning,they can recognize when content feels generic or artificial and yearn for genuine expression.
Public reaction has been mixed. On social media platforms like Reddit, some users humorously embrace the term as emblematic of the digital “slopocalypse,” while others lament how pervasive cheap AI content has become in their feeds and discussions.
Broad Implications Beyond Language
The fact that a widely respected dictionary chose a word centered on AI low quality highlights how deeply these technologies have affected communication, media, and even workplace culture in 2025. Rather than simply celebrating technological innovation, the choice reflects a collective reckoning with the unintended consequences of generative AI,the trade-off between productivity and substance, novelty and noise, automation and authenticity.
As digital content continues to grow and evolve, “slop” will likely remain a shorthand for debates around AI: how it augments creativity, where it falls short, and how societies choose to manage and interpret the deluge of machine-produced media around them.