Merriam-Webster’s picks ‘slop’ as word of 2025, in vogue due to AI

Washington: Creepy, zany and demonstrably fake content is often called “slop”. The word’s proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, landed it Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year. “It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president ahead of Monday’s announcement. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous.”

“Slop” was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more generally to mean something of little value. The definition has since expanded to mean “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”. In other words, “you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, junky AI-written digital books,” Barlow said.

AI video generators have wowed with their ability to quickly create realistic clips based merely on text prompts. But a flood of these images on social media, including clips depicting celebrities and deceased public figures, has raised worries about misinformation, deepfakes and copyright.

Such content has existed online for years, but the tools are more accessible now — and used to political ends by, among other figures, the head of the Pentagon. Last month, defence secretary Pete Hegseth posted a manipulated image of a cartoon turtle, reimagined as a grenade-wielding fighter, to defend US military actions in Venezuela.

The Canadian animated show “Franklin” teaches about kindness, empathy and inclusivity — but in Hegseth’s hands, its main character became a tool to promote violence. The word “slop” evokes unpleasant images of mud-caked pigs crowding around a dirty trough, or perhaps a bucket of steaming, fetid stew.

To select the word of the year, the dictionary’s editors review data about which words have risen in searches and usage. Then they come to a consensus about which word best reflects the span of the year. “We like to think that we are a mirror for people,” Barlow said.