Roll over spam and cookies, a new tech phrase is in town, according to the Macquarie Dictionary, which made “AI slop” its term of 2025 at the end of November. Internet consumers are now being fed so much AI slop, the Australian language authority says, it meets their criteria for “a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year.”
As AI begins to spread its tentacles into nearly all forms of human endeavour, from travel planning to essay writing, to avionics, or the preservation of ancient artefacts, the public reaction remains split between those who view artificial intelligence as just another tool for productivity and creativity, and others who are wary of its impact on the human ability to spot AI-generated content, as well as its effect on jobs and even company valuations, leading to what is being called an AI financial bubble.
On both sides of the argument, the term AI slop can be understood, the Dictionary panel noted. But what exactly is it? Macquarie’s group of experts has almost said the term is self-explanatory. “We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop – AI-generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use,” said the group of experts, including Macquarie’s editorial team, broadcaster ABC’s language specialist Tiger Webb, and TV host, writer, and cryptic crossword creator, David Astle.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Guardian newspaper has previously attempted to describe the “staggering” scope of AI output from the “banal and pointless” to “pornified” content, to “rightwing political fantasy,” arguing that “the result is not just a blurring of reality, but a distortion of it.”
Commenting on the winning entry to the dictionary, Astle has compared AI slop to another scourge that invaded what many believe could have been a utopic online realm: “spam,” a term which emerged in the nineties to describe large quantities of unsolicited email advertising sent en masse by businesses.
Astle also highlighted the way the word can easily be made into a portmanteau or combined with other words to create new meanings or further neologisms, such as “slopaganda” or “slop music” – something likely to contribute to its growing use.
Like Astle, the rest of the committee expressed confidence that the term AI slop would be just as enduring as spam, making it an epoch-defining, if negative, choice and one that has changed the behaviours of internet users. “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,” they said in a statement.
Unsurprisingly, AI slop was not the only artificial intelligence-related entry in the year’s shortlist. “Clanker,” which describes an AI-bot trained to perform human tasks, received an honourable mention from the committee, too. The fact that “clanker” is a pejorative term or slur is another indication that the tide of opinion could be rising against AI.
