Merriam-Webster names ‘slop’ as word of the year amid AI content surge
The rise of such content has also given birth to what observers have described as a slop economy, where large volumes of AI-generated material are monetised through advertising.
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Merriam-Webster has named slop as its word of the year for 2025, highlighting growing unease and mockery surrounding the explosion of artificial intelligence-generated content across the internet.
The dictionary defined slop as digital content of low quality that is produced usually in large quantities using artificial intelligence. In an explanatory note, Merriam-Webster stated that the word carries a deliberately unpleasant texture, likening it to terms such as slime, sludge and muck, and suggesting that it reflects a tone that is less fearful and more mocking of AI at a time of widespread anxiety around the technology.
Merriam-Webster president Greg Barlow informed The Associated Press that slop is an especially illustrative term because it captures how people experience AI as a transformative technology that is simultaneously fascinating, irritating and faintly ridiculous.
The word gained prominence over the past year as journalists and commentators searched for language to describe how generative platforms such as OpenAI’s Sora and Google Gemini’s Veo are reshaping the digital ecosystem. The rapid spread of AI tools has led to a surge in automatically generated books, podcasts, pop songs, television advertisements and even full-length films. A study published in May reported that nearly 75% of new web content created in the preceding month involved some form of artificial intelligence.
The rise of such content has also given birth to what observers have described as a slop economy, where large volumes of AI-generated material are monetised through advertising. Critics have warned that this trend risks deepening divisions online by pushing users who cannot afford subscriptions or paywalled services towards increasingly low-value content, which often offers little meaningful information.
Beyond media and entertainment, the term slop has been used more broadly to describe the influence of AI across multiple sectors, including cybersecurity reporting, legal documentation and academic submissions such as college essays, underlining the breadth of its impact.
The selection of slop reflects a wider pattern of technology-driven language dominating word-of-the-year lists in 2025. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary earlier chose AI slop as its annual term, Oxford Dictionary selected ragebait, while Collins Dictionary named vibe coding, underscoring how rapidly evolving digital culture continues to shape the global vocabulary.
