Two telling tales about the impact of the emerging artificial intelligence realm on human life emerged from a pair of end-of-year announcements over the last week. One was the word “slop” being named word of the year for 2025 by the editors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” This sums up the fact that AI has been churning out content that some people find annoying or even bordering on the ridiculous.

Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year is "slop," reflecting the rise of low-quality, AI-generated digital content.

Editors at Merriam-Webster, America's oldest dictionary publisher, picked "slop" as 2025's word and say it helped define the year overall.