What it is
Merriam-Webster named “slop” its word of the year for 2025 and defined it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” The dictionary said the word carries more mockery than fear.
The programmer Simon Willison helped popularize it in 2024, comparing it to spam: unwanted, unreviewed AI output pushed at people who didn’t ask for it.
How it shows up for me
I build things with AI every day, so I’ve had to think about where I stand. I wrote that “slop is still art, just sloppy,” and I still think that. The line for me isn’t whether AI touched it. It’s whether a person cared, checked it and stood behind it.