slop

What does slop mean?

For centuries slop was what went in the pig trough: kitchen scraps, watery leftovers, food nobody wanted. Today it mostly means the digital version. Slop is content churned out in quantity, usually by generative AI, with no one checking whether it is true, useful or any good.

Merriam-Webster's definition, chosen for its 2025 Word of the Year, is digital content of low quality produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence. The dictionary listed the kinds of things it had in mind: absurd videos, off-kilter ads, cheesy propaganda, fake news and AI-written books.

In practice, slop looks like:

• An AI image of an impossible scene, posted by a page you never followed, with thousands of "Amen" comments.
• A narrated video where a synthetic voice reads a story over stock footage.
• A how-to article that repeats the question four times before giving a vague answer.
• A book on a shopping site with a made-up author and a cover in the same glossy AI style as fifty others.

The insult does not depend on AI alone. What makes something slop is the combination of low effort, high volume and a purpose other than quality, usually clicks or cash. Programmer Simon Willison, who helped popularize the term, compared it to spam: unwanted, unreviewed and pushed at you anyway.

Slop as a suffix

The word now bolts onto other words. The American Dialect Society recorded sloppunk, slopification and friend slop. Others include workslop, AI-made work that someone else has to clean up, and friendslop, cheap indie games played with friends, which Collins added to its 2026 list. Gamers and film fans also call any formula product slop, AI or not: "another live-action remake, more slop."

Other meanings. Slop still means watery, unappetizing food or liquid waste, as in "slop bucket," and spilled liquid, as when tea slops over a cup's rim. Sloppy, meaning careless, comes from the same root.

Examples

• Facebook feed: "Why is my aunt sharing AI slop of a giant cabbage that won a county fair?"
• YouTube: "Every video on this channel is slop. Same robot voice, same Reddit story, 40 uploads a week."
• At work: "Please read the report before forwarding it. This is workslop, and now I have to fix it."
• Bookstore app: "Searched for a beginner's guide to bread. Got twelve pages of slop with fake authors."
• Gaming group chat: "it's friendslop but I've had more fun in it than in the $70 game"
• Art class: "She said the poster looked like AI slop, and honestly the hands did have seven fingers."
• Parent overhears: "It's not a real cat playing piano, Grandpa. It's slop."

Slop works as a mass noun ("so much slop"), as a label ("this is slop") and inside compounds. People from tech workers to teenagers use it, nearly always with contempt.

Where did slop come from?

• Long before the internet: Slop meant liquid food and scraps fed to farm animals. Linguist Kelly Elizabeth Wright summed up the journey at the American Dialect Society vote as farm feed to algorithm.
• 2022: As image generators reached the public, users on 4chan, Hacker News and YouTube began calling the output slop, competing with labels like "AI garbage."
• May 8, 2024: Simon Willison wrote that slop was becoming the term for unwanted AI-generated content, crediting a tweet by @deepfates from the day before. Mainstream coverage followed.
• 2024: AI images such as "Shrimp Jesus" spread on Facebook, and Coca-Cola's AI-made holiday ads drew a backlash in November.
• December 15, 2025: Merriam-Webster named slop its 2025 Word of the Year. The finalists included six seven, touch grass and performative.
• January 9, 2026: The American Dialect Society also chose slop, in its vote in New Orleans.

Is slop rude?

It is an insult for content, not a swear word, and teachers and journalists use it freely. Pointed at a person's work, though, it is harsh. Telling an artist their drawing looks like AI slop accuses them of not making it, which can hurt if they did. "Slopper," for someone who leans on AI for everything, is a put-down too.

For families, the word is a handy prompt. Asking "is this real or is it slop?" before sharing a viral image is a quick media-literacy habit.

How to reply to slop

• A friend sends an AI video as if it were real: "That's slop. Look at the background, the people have no faces."
• Your kid calls your favorite recipe site slop: "Rude, but the pop-ups do have me thinking you're right."
• A coworker asks you to review an AI-written draft: "Happy to, but it reads like slop right now. Can you add the real numbers first?"

Is slop still used in 2026?

Yes, and it is still spreading. Two Word of the Year picks in late 2025 and early 2026, plus new compounds like friendslop, show it gaining senses rather than losing them. It overlaps with brainrot, the foggy feeling a feed of slop can leave behind, and with rage bait, which often travels in the same feeds. For more on the year's dictionary picks, see Word of the Year 2026.