Merriam‑Webster picks “slop” as 2025 word of the year, citing AI‑generated junk

Summary

An Associated Press piece published by Telangana Today reports that Merriam‑Webster has chosen “slop” as its 2025 word of the year, reflecting public frustration with a flood of low‑quality, AI‑generated content online. The dictionary now defines “slop” in part as digital content of low value mass‑produced by artificial intelligence, encompassing everything from weird ad images and junky e‑books to propaganda and fake news that’s hard to distinguish from reality. Executives at Merriam‑Webster say the surge in lookups for the term shows people are becoming more alert to synthetic ‘garbage’ and are actively seeking more authentic work, even as tools like Sora supercharge the volume and realism of generated media. The choice crystallizes a growing cultural backlash: AI isn’t just raising classic concerns about jobs and bias, it’s also reshaping language itself as people look for ways to name — and push back against — the sense that their feeds are drowning in algorithmic noise.