Merriam-Webster’s names ‘rank’ the word of the year

The impact of AI on our TV feeds has not gone unnoticed by one of America’s top commentators. Amidst a flurry of news that has swept the Internet over the past 12 months, Merriam-Webster announced Sunday that its annual forecast for 2025 is “declining.”

A dictionary defines a word as “low-quality digital content that is often produced in large quantities by artificial intelligence.”

“Like mud, mudand mud, to slide it has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. “Slide into everything,” the dictionary wrote, adding that, in the age of AI anxiety, it’s a word designed to communicate a “fearless, derisive voice” of technology.

“It’s a metaphor,” Merriam-Webster president Greg Barlow told The Associated Press. “It’s a piece of revolutionary technology, AI, and it’s something people have found interesting, frustrating, and a little bit silly.”

The word “slop” has been all over the place this year, as journalists and commentators seek to describe the platform’s preferred methods. OpenAI and Sora and I Spy for Google Gemini they are changing the internet. Thanks to this new generator, there are AI-generated books, podcasts, pop music, TV commercials — and even entire movies. One lesson in May he said that nearly 75% of all internet innovations last month involved some form of AI.

These new tools have led to the so-called “slop economy,” in which many products are created by AI. may be charged for advertising. Opponents worry about that This is also expanding the digital community, dividing them into those who can afford premium, high-end, and those who can afford digital food, which – as you can imagine – can be light on information.

But “slop” has also been used to describe AI’s impact on many fields that have little to do with media consumption, including cybersecurity reports, legal discussionand college essayamong others. The results are dramatic, to say the least.

Together, the word tech has become the best in the WOTY category (word of the year). this year. The Macquarie Dictionary already beat Merriam-Webster to “AI slop” its annual term, while the Oxford Dictionary chose “ragebait.” Collins Dictionary went with “vibe coding.”