AI slop
Saber Conectado, 21 December 2025.
The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. On Wikipedia, it is mentioned that “it is considered by many to be the standard reference on Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English.”
The Macquire Dictionary website explains that,
“The Word of the Year often reflects a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year, and this year’s results are no different. While large language models and AI as a whole are not new, it is undeniable how they are now directly affecting our lives and have become a major part of public discourse over the past 12 months.” (Macquarie Dictionary, 2025)
This year, the winner was AI slop.
AI Slop (noun Colloquial)
low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user. (Macquarie Word of the Year 2025).
From: Macquirie Dictionary Word of the Year 2025
Word of the year voting
According to Macquarie Word Of The Year website the voting is divided in two parts:
First, The Committee pre-selected words and announced a short list on their webpage for people to vote. This year the words selected to the shortlist were: six-seven, Roman Empire, Ozempic face, quadball, medical misogyny, femgore, clanker, blind box, bird-dogging, bathroom camping, BAL rating, Australian sushi, attention economy, ate (and left no crumbs) and Ai slop. In the second part, they opened the voting for the People’s Choice Award.
For the fourth time, the Dictionary’s committee and people’s voting (through the website) chose the same word. (Macquarie Dictionary 2025). The voting was conducted through their website and it was announced on November 25th , 2025. (Macquarie Word of the Year 2025).
The Committee states that
‘We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop — AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use. 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?’
Dual recognition: Macquaire Dictionary and Merriam-Webster
From: ABC News
‘Slop’ was also chosen Word of the Year 2025 by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, on 14 December 2025. Guy (2025) writes that “Merriam-Webster is the latest in a string of dictionaries to choose words of the year based on our relationship with technology and artificial intelligence. Collins’ word of the year “vibe coding,” Cambridge’s “parasocial” and Oxford’s “rage bait” all reflect contemporary concerns about the effects of tech on our lives.”
The three words were covered in this project and can be read at the links below:
AI slop X Brain rot
It is important to highlight the distinction between ‘AI slop’ and ‘brain rot’. ‘AI slop’ refers to the influx of low‑quality, mass‑produced digital content generated by artificial intelligence. In contrast, ‘brain rot’ describes the cognitive effects of excessive consumption of superficial content (whether AI‑generated or not) that can affect attention, critical thinking and overall mental engagement.
‘Brain rot’ was chosen as 2024 Word Of The Year by Oxford Press University.
Behind the flood of AI Slop on internet
The following video report investigates who and what is behind the mass production of AI slop, including interviews/comments from people involved in this process.
This video is part of the program “ The Listening Post” by AI Jazeera English on YouTube. Its focus is to show how platforms were taken over by low-quality materials that are made in mass production to explore algorithms, making more money and views on the internet.
REFERENCES
ABC NEWS. Slop crowned Merriam-Webster Word of the Year, defining an era. ABC News, 14 dez. 2025. Acessed: 19 Dec. 2025.
AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. Who’s behind the flood of AI slop online? | The Listening Post. YouTube, 17 nov. 2025. Vídeo (9 min 39 s). Accessed: 18 Dec. 2025.
GUY, Jack. Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year aims at poor AI content. CNN, 16 dez. 2025. Disponível em: Accessed: 19 Dec. 2025.
MACQUARIE DICTIONARY. Word of the Year 2025: AI slop. Macquarie Dictionary Official Announcement, 2025. Accessed: 15 Dec. 2025.
MACQUARIE DICTIONARY. In: WIKIPÉDIA: a enciclopédia livre. Wikipedia Foundation, 2025. Accessed: 19 Dec. 2025.
