Merriam-Webster Names Slop 2025 Word of the Year

Merriam-Webster announced on Sunday that "slop" is its Word of the Year for 2025, highlighting the surge of low-quality digital content generated by artificial intelligence that has inundated social media, search engines, and the broader internet.

The dictionary defines "slop" as digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence. Editors selected the term after reviewing spikes in search volume and usage data, determining it best captured a defining cultural trend. "It's such an illustrative word," Merriam-Webster President Greg Barlow said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's part of a transformative technology, AI, and it's something that people have found fascinating, annoying, and a little bit ridiculous."

The choice reflects growing public awareness of AI's role in flooding online spaces with substandard material. Examples include absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, fake news that appears realistic, junky AI-written books, tedious workplace reports, and viral clips featuring talking cats. Platforms powered by tools like OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo have accelerated this trend, enabling the rapid...