Khaberni - In a clear reflection of the accelerated transformations in the digital space, the Merriam-Webster foundation selected the term "Slop" to be the word of the year 2025, in reference to the growing flood of poor and illogical content produced by artificial intelligence technologies, which has been causing widespread discontent among internet users around the world.
The term AI Slop refers to the enormous amount of low-quality content that is automatically generated using artificial intelligence, including nonsensical video clips, distorted advertising images, fake news that seems realistic, worthless automatically written books, repetitive work reports that waste employees' time, and superficial entertainment clips such as "talking cats" that fill social media platforms.
According to technical reports, this type of content has become widely prevalent across various platforms, and WIRED magazine quotes a supervisor on the Reddit platform saying that "the slop" content existed on the platform even before a clear term was coined for it.
And it's not just limited to Reddit, as major platforms like X and Facebook are suffering from increasing problems related to automated accounts (Bots) that post AI-generated content heavily, negatively affecting the quality of public discourse and content credibility.
The controversy has also reached academic circles, where Dr. Craig Reeves, a law professor at the University of London, stated in comments reported by "The Guardian" newspaper, that universities themselves are suffering from the dominance of "the slop," blaming artificial intelligence researchers for this.
Reeves said: "This is a natural result of irresponsible innovations released into the world without anyone asking us if we wanted them from the start," indicating the lack of adequate ethical and regulatory frameworks.
In response to this deterioration, some platforms have started to implement practical actions. According to Forbes, TikTok launched new tools this year that allow users to control the type of content that appears on their pages, to limit random and undesirable clips on the "For You" page.
In contrast, other platforms have turned to stricter policies, as the Medium platform announced updates in its partners' program, explicitly encouraging the publication of only human content and restricting reliance on automatically generated texts.
Why is "Slop" the word of the year?
Merriam-Webster justified its choice by stating that "the flood of slop during 2025 included nonsensical videos, unbalanced advertisements, cheap propaganda, fake news that looks real, poor books written by artificial intelligence, and pointless work reports.. and although many were annoyed by them, some consumed them heavily."
While "the slop" has become a prominent feature of modern internet, the growing awareness of its dangers is prompting an increasing number of platforms and institutions to resist it, in an effort to maintain content quality and prevent the erosion of trust and credibility in the digital space.
