AI slop is here, it’s ubiquitous, it’s being used by the US president, Donald Trump, and now, it’s the word of the year.
The Macquarie Dictionary dubbed the term the epitome of 2025 linguistics, with a committee of word experts saying the outcome embodies the word of the year’s general theme of reflecting “a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year”.
“We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop – AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use,” the committee said in a statement announcing its decision.
“While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come.
“The question is, are the people ingesting and regurgitating this content soon to be called AI sloppers?”
The term was up against a shortlist of other cultural moments and terminology, including: Ozempic face (a condition resulting from the use of a semaglutide drug); blind box (a type of mystery box containing an unseen collectible); ate (and left no crumbs) (an expression used to indicate that someone has performed or executed something perfectly; and Roman Empire (a term for various events, interests or subjects, that one finds themselves frequently thinking about).
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Honourable mentions selected by the committee included clankers, a term for an artificial intelligence-driven robot which completes tasks that are normally performed by a human; and medical misogyny, referencing entrenched prejudice against women in the context of medical treatment and knowledge.
The people’s choice also went to AI slop, with honourable mentions for medical misogyny and the attention economy (an economy in which human attention is treated as a major commodity).
The committee was made up of the editorial team at Macquarie Dictionary as well as the ABC language research specialist Tiger Webb and cryptic crossword legend David Astle, better known as DA.
Astle wrote that AI slop was this decade’s equivalent of spam in a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald.
“AI slop, to be precise, the clear victor of the Internet category,” he wrote. “Handily the barb can be packed into fusions, such as slopaganda, slop music and corpslop, to name three.
“Though come the crunch, the robots won twice over. Not just their clanker slur, but the scrumptious slop they serve on demand. Alphabet soup du jour with a splash of unknown sources.”
AI has only grown from its already stratospheric origins over the last 12 months. Trump has regularly uploaded videos featuring AI slop to his millions of followers, and was dubbed the “emperor” of such content by the New Yorker earlier this year.
Domestically, the Australian Electoral Commission has warned AI is being used more and more in many forms of communication, saying while there are some benefits, there are obvious negatives, too. Those harms include deepfake videos, manipulated media and falsified audio.
Guardian Australia asked ChatGPT how it felt about AI slop being dubbed 2025’s word du jour.
“The fact that AI slop won Word of the Year tells me that people are becoming more discerning about the quality of AI-generated content,” the AI engine said. “That’s good for everyone – including the development of better AI – because it creates pressure for transparency, accuracy, and substance rather than volume.”
ChatGPT said being asked about the honour was a helpful reminder – a prompt, if you will – about its purpose.
“I exist to avoid producing exactly what the term refers to – so seeing it elevated to a cultural milestone is a bit like being reminded of the standard I need to live up to every time I answer a prompt.”
