«Slop,» the word that best defined 2025, the year the internet mutated into a festering cesspool

The official definition of «slop» is «low-quality digital content that is generally produced in large quantities using artificial intelligence.»

Over the past twelve months, the term «AI Slop» has been used ad nauseam to refer to the torrent of junk content generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Given the alarming ubiquity of this concept, the American publisher Merriam-Webster, responsible for the prestigious dictionary of the same name, has chosen «slop» as its word of the year for 2025, a year we are about to conclude.

The official definition of «slop,» according to Merriam-Webster, is «low-quality digital content that is generally produced in large quantities with the support of artificial intelligence.» The current meaning of the English word «slop» is quite different from its original meaning when it was first coined in the 18th century. Back then, the term meant «soft mud.» Its meaning gradually shifted, eventually becoming synonymous with «garbage.» And it has ultimately mutated into the most fitting term to describe the current lamentable state of the internet.

At a time when there’s a lot of talk about the hidden threats to AI, the concept of «slop» seems «less frightening and more mocking,» says Merriam-Webster. It’s a word that «sends a little message to AI: when this technology replaces human creativity, it definitely doesn’t seem so smart.»

What seems undeniable is that the concept of «slop» largely dominated the collective consciousness in 2025, fitting like a glove to describe both the content we consume online and the food that makes up our diet (literally).

When 2025 had barely begun, the so-called «AI Slop» had already set off alarm bells. Indeed, during the wildfires that ravaged California last January, rescue videos began to surface online that were actually the product of AI and were trying to capitalize on the tragedy. And just a couple of months later, in March of this year, a study from Cornell University warned that the rise of the «AI Slop» was beginning to suffocate the internet.

A year grappling with the unbearable stench emanating from the internet

Since then, the problem of the «AI Slop» has only worsened online. In recent months, we have witnessed, among other things, a worrying wave of fake content about the Holocaust. The «AI Slop» infiltrated the election campaign of former New York City Mayor Andrew Cuomo and also the propaganda associated with Donald Trump. Following the murder of Charlie Kirk, numerous AI-generated tributes emerged to honor the memory of the conservative activist.

The «AI Slop» has also tainted the marketing and advertising industry (from which ads have sprung up in recent months only to be bombarded with criticism on social media and eventually withdrawn). Platforms like Pinterest have been forced to implement new filters to allow their users to escape the insidious and entrenched clutches of AI-generated content. Nothing and no one on the internet seems able to escape this great pandemic that is the «AI Slop,» which is particularly worrying because it makes truth and falsehood virtually indistinguishable. Approximately 80% of AI-generated videos circulating on social media are so deceptively realistic that users struggle to identify them as fake, according to a report by AI Forensics.

«The 2025 AI Slop avalanche included ludicrous videos, utterly ludicrous advertising images, crude propaganda, uncannily real fake news, AI-generated trash books, abominably bad synthetic reports that do nothing but waste coworkers’ time, and lots of talking cats,» Merriam-Webster notes. Similar to the mud to which its original meaning referred, «slop» is a word that evokes «the wet sound of something you definitely don’t want to touch,» the American publisher emphasizes.

Source: www.marketingdirecto.com