Merriam-Webster has named “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year, choosing a term that has been repurposed to describe the flood of low-quality digital material produced and amplified by generative AI. The dictionary’s president, Greg Barlow, told the Associated Press the choice reflects a cultural moment when new technology is both useful and exasperating — often producing results that strike people as bizarre, annoying or plainly ridiculous.
Originally used in the 1700s to mean soft mud and later to describe something of little value, “slop” now includes a modern sense: cheaply made or junk digital content churned out in bulk by automated tools. That umbrella covers everything from absurd, computer-generated videos and strange advertising images to crude propaganda, convincing-looking fake news and poorly written AI-authored books.
Tools that turn text prompts into video, such as Sora, can quickly create convincing clips. The ease of producing these images and videos — even of celebrities or deceased public figures — has intensified worries about misinformation, deepfakes and copyright misuse. While such content has existed for years, wider availability of the tools and their use for political ends has raised the stakes. One notable example: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a manipulated image that recast Franklin, the Canadian children’s cartoon turtle, as a grenade-wielding fighter to argue for U.S. actions in Venezuela. The show’s gentle, pro-kindness protagonist was repurposed to promote violence, illustrating how “slop” can warp familiar symbols.
The term evokes both literal muck and a sensory disgust at sloppy digital mash-ups that reflect algorithmic bias or offensive errors. But Barlow sees a silver lining: rising searches for the word suggest people are becoming better at spotting fakery and are increasingly hungry for authentic, well-made work. In that sense, “slop” is a pushback against the idea that AI will seamlessly replace human creativity.
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is selected after editors review search trends and usage data, then agree on the single term that best captures the year’s themes. Some frequently looked-up words are considered but set aside — perennial favorites like ubiquitous, paradigm, albeit and irregardless often top lookup charts even though only some are listed in the dictionary because of widespread use. The publisher has selected a word each year since 2003; last year’s choice was “polarisation.”
The announcement comes shortly after a major update to the dictionary that added more than 5,000 words in a rare, wide-ranging revision aimed at reflecting current language and usage.
